Photo by Ava Holmes

Delicately placing the string to form the shape of a cornucopia, seniors Haley Burton and Avery Nelson create the November arrangement for the Flower of the Month Club. This club is led by Advanced Floral Design Students and provides a monthly arrangement to community members who subscribe to receive them. “I think flower of the month club is a really impactful way to show your loved ones ‘hey I really care about you,’ or even if they’re just for yourself, they’re a little pick-me-up throughout the month that [say] ‘I’m doing ok, and these flowers make my day a little bit brighter,” Nelson said. “I like giving people flowers because people value the flowers more and they value themselves more.”

Walking down the hallway with her arms bursting with color, a student enters a teacher’s classroom. The teacher smiles from ear to ear and the classroom oohs and ahhs, as a beautiful flower arrangement modeled after a cornucopia is placed onto the desk. The student waves goodbye to the teacher and then continues down the hallway to deliver the rest of November’s flower arrangement.

The Flower Pack is made up of Advanced Floral Design students who run a flower shop called the Flower of the Month Club. Teachers and community members can subscribe to the Flower of the Month Club to receive a floral arrangement once a month. They delivered the November arrangements on Nov. 20.

“It feels amazing being able to give something to our teachers [because they] work so hard to educate us,” advanced floral design student and senior Avery Nelson said. “Anytime I give flowers to teachers their faces just light up with so much joy from seeing the flowers and it brings me joy as well [to know] that our hard work as a club paid off.”

When there is a holiday in the month, the vase, flowers and colors will be themed to match it. Senior Haley Burton, president of the Flower of the Month Club and floral practicum student, is responsible for making flyers, sign-up sheets and customer surveys to gain feedback and designing the arrangement for the month.

“I’ve learned a lot about flowers and arrangements, and  I’m researching how to satisfy customers [in my floral practicum class], so I’ve learned a lot about marketing and promotion and a bit about business and sales,” Burton said. “If I were to do something business-related, what I’ve learned about marketing and how to make sales would definitely help me.”

Nelson has built up her experience in floral design by competing in the Greater Leander FFA competition where she created arrangements ahead of time in three categories: fresh centerpiece, large event/wedding, and spirit wear. With her arrangements, she placed second as Reserve Grand Champion and will compete again this year using the skills she’s gained from the Flower of the Month Club. Nelson said she loves working with flowers and using her creativity to show her passion for agriculture, but it can be difficult to satisfy the customer.

“It takes a lot of practice to understand that every single angle has to be filled in or else [the arrangement] is going to look empty,” Nelson said. “People want to see the color, and they want to see all of the different types of flowers that we use [but] they don’t really want to see foam [or] empty space, so we try our best to fill that in with the flowers we’re using and make sure that everything is proportional and cohesive with each other.”

To make the arrangements, the flowers must be processed and equipment prepared. This can include sanitizing the shears, measuring the flowers and cutting and soaking the flower foam. In the case of October’s beetle juice flower arrangement, Nelson said plastic wrap was needed to line the inside of the popcorn bucket used as the vase to prevent it from getting soggy.

“We use kind of everything and anything as vases,” Nelson said. “If it has an open volume area then it can be considered a container. We’ve used ceramic pumpkins before, we’ve done bud vases, we’ve done rolls. [For] me personally, I’ve used a teacup as a container and a water pitcher [which] were some fun containers.”

In order to get inspiration for the colors, flowers, and vases for each arrangement, Burton looks at Pinterest, old Flower of the Month Club arrangements, and objects that go with the theme for the month such as a cornucopia, pumpkin, or a turkey. 

“[The hardest part is] trying to do something unique,” Burton said. “I’ve been doing this for two years, and it’s hard to come up with something new. What I’ve learned about customers is they don’t like basic things, they want something that’s different, so it’s hard trying to find something different.”

Community members who have ordered flowers are given a time to pick up their arrangements from the school. The arrangements for teachers who ordered flowers are delivered to them by members of the Flower Pack, whether they teach a few doors down from the floral classroom or a few streets down at a nearby elementary school.

“[The club has] grown towards student ownership,” Morton said. “Instead of me planning the arrangements like it started for the teacher before me, now it’s the students planning out the entire process. So they get to really take ownership of their learning and learn business skills that can transfer whether they go into the floral industry or not.”

Morton said the Flower of the Month Club ranges from 10 to 25 subscribers a month, but she said she hopes to have close to 50 subscribers a month by the end of the school year. To reach this goal, the Flower Pack will begin advertising to students and their parents in addition to staff and community members.

“I think flower of the month club is a really impactful way to show your loved ones ‘hey, I really care about you,’ or even if they’re just for yourself, they’re a little pick-me-up throughout the month that [says] ‘I’m doing ok, and these flowers make my day a little bit brighter,” Nelson said. “I like giving people flowers because people value flowers more and they value themselves more.”