Flowers - Farm To You
"Flowers grow out of dark moments." - Corita Kent
Flower Power: How Forward Flora Is Repurposing Flowers
Forward Flora Is Repurposing Flowers One Event at a Time
In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Midge convinces a priest to repurpose funeral flowers as wedding flowers the following week. This was done humorously to save money, but it gave the flowers a longer life. Why not?
According to Jess Doyel from Forward Flora, fresh flowers are treated as a “single-use product.” This means florals from large events like weddings, funerals, parties, balls and fundraisers are typically thrown away. Jess and her partner Max aim to change this practice while teaching us how we can respect the entire lifecycle of flowers (and support our community, too).
Both Nashville natives, Jess and Max met while living in New York where Jess worked in the floral industry. “I was able to pull back the curtain and see the waste being produced in botanicals, especially through large events.” As she became more aware, she began repurposing flowers herself—see her exquisite repurposed floral masks at jessikadoyel.com—and was introduced to Liza Lubell of Garbage Goddess, a New York organization focusing on zero-waste floral events. Jess became a breakdown floral manager and learned how to curb large-scale floral waste.
Then she brought the concept to Nashville.
Forward Flora is a local company that works with florists, event venues and small community organizations to break down florals from events, parties, weddings and more and distribute them and installation elements to compost centers, artists and natural burials, or to repurpose them so they don’t go to the landfill. The duo has begun working with sustainability programs throughout the city. “We want to create a curiosity and creativity around sustainability in Nashville,” says Jess.
Some ways Forward Flora recycles florals:
- works with Living Earth to compost large amounts of florals
- donates repurposed bouquets to the FreeStore and the Edgehill Neighborhood Partnership
- gives florals to local artists who use them to make dyes and Plant the Seed Nashville, where young people get hands-on learning with them
- contributes blooms to natural burial sites at Larkspur Conservation
John Christian Phifer, executive director of Larkspur Conservation, says “florals comfort the families we serve and make a terribly difficult time more beautiful, gentle and intimate. The donated florals from Forward Flora help offset the cost of flowers we otherwise purchase and enable us to redirect those funds to other mission-driven purposes. Flowers are also a safe way to reintroduce beneficial nitrogen and organic matter to the landscape of our nature preserve and burial ground. Like those people buried at Larkspur, the flowers truly live on.
“Flowers are beautiful and have a lifespan way beyond a few hours. You just have to be a little creative to be sustainable, and the added benefit is a community and connection through flowers.”
Learn more about Forward Flora at forwardflora.com and @forward.flora on Instagram.
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