Floral designers came from hundreds of miles away to lend a hand at Blumen Meister’s Flower Market in New Braunfels, Texas, which is helping Uvalde florists prepare arrangements for the funerals of the May 24 shooting victims.
Teia Bennett lovingly and expertly arranged her sons’ donated Pokémon collectibles among the yellow, orange, purple and red roses, green hydrangea, and Veronica that encircled a funeral wreath for 10-year-old Rojelio Torres.
The wreath is one of the many floral arrangements made for the funerals of the 19 children, including Torres, and two teachers killed in the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
“I have four boys, and they had gotten some of their Pokémon because we are trying to find meaningful ways to personalize the flowers,” says Bennett. “It has been heartbreaking to hear the stories.”
Bennett, owner of Blumen Meister’s Flower Market in New Braunfels, Texas, is part of the floral industry’s swift and powerful response to provide flowers, hard goods and more for each of the funerals that started last week and will be held through June 15. Donations have poured in from the industry including countless stems, ribbons, hard goods, gas cards, and funds. Designers have driven hundreds of miles to lend a hand.
“It’s been a beautiful outpouring of the floral community,” says Dianna Nordman, AAF, executive director of the Texas State Florists’ Association (TSFA), which has taken a leading role in organizing the logistics for the industry’s response.
Immediate Needs
Following the tragedy, TSFA President Cheryl Vaughan quickly called the two florists in Uvalde — The Flower Patch and Country Gardens & Seed — to offer support.
“We immediately started getting orders from them that needed to be filled,” Vaughan says, explaining that the number of orders far exceeded what could be handled by the two stores.
While some volunteers flocked to Uvalde to help, Vaughan worked with Bennett to set up an outpost at Blumen Meister’s, which is a little more than a two-hour drive from Uvalde.
At Blumen Meister’s, they transformed the 3,000-square-foot store by setting up 10 additional workstations in addition to the five already in place.
“This is a place to get everything done for Uvalde and take some of the pressure off of them to get these funeral arrangements done,” Vaughan says, noting that they are making casket sprays, baskets, arrangements, heart forms, wreaths, and regular easels.
TSFA received donations from 33 growers, wholesalers, hard good companies, and had 19 volunteers come to Blumen Meister’s to help, Nordman says. Additionally, the city of New Braunfels has provided hotel accommodations for volunteers staying more than a day, restaurants have fed the volunteers, a gas station donated fuel cards to offset the cost of delivering the flowers, and others have offered to drive the two to four vans needed daily to deliver the flowers to Uvalde.
“We couldn’t do this by ourselves — they couldn’t do it by themselves,” Vaughn says. “It is the whole flower industry coming together.”
‘Overwhelming’ Response
No one has kept count of how many stems have been processed and arranged, and the combined value of the donations is unknown. But the volume, by all accounts, has been overwhelming.
When Ed Fimbel, a retired designer from Northlake, Texas who is volunteering at Blumen Meister’s, started making a solid red rose cross on Sunday, he thought he would count the stems.
“We had an overabundance of red roses and the only instruction on the order was for it to be a cross,” he says.
As he built the cross over the course of an hour, the roses transformed the piece that would be displayed at one of the boy’s funerals.
“To me it was striking, it looked like nothing but red velvet,” Fimbel says. “I have no earthly idea of how many roses I put in that.”
In addition to roses of many colors and varieties, thousands of snapdragons, sunflowers, carnations, tulips, lilies, alstroemeria, Sweet William, delphinium, and many other fillers and varieties have arrived in Texas. They were all donated from farms and wholesalers in South and Central America, Canada, California, and Texas.
Word spread on social media and through industry associations. CalFlowers, the California Association of Flower Growers & Shippers, put out a call to its members, who responded directly.
“CalFlowers’ role in this was to broadcast the message regarding flower donations,” CalFlowers Executive Director Steve Dionne wrote in an email. “In truth it was our individual members who stepped up to donate who deserve the credit. We work in such an amazing industry!”
Teleflora, FTD and BloomNet have all donated, but so have so many others that Vaughan is concerned any list would leave out someone.
“Local wholesalers have paid for freight and given product,” she says. “Whatever we’ve asked, they have given us.”
Underwriters of TSFA’s educational programs, including Bill Doran Company, Klepac Greenhouses, Rio Roses, Taylor Wholesale, Southern Floral Co., Pikes Peak Wholesale Florist, Taylor Wholesale, Zoom Roses, Espirit, Smithers Oasis and Freytag’s Florist are all contributors to the effort, Nordman says.
TSFA board is grateful for the outpouring of support, and its board has pledged to ensure every floral need for the funerals is met, even if it means that TSFA needs to step in to fill a gap.
“We will support it with funding,” Nordman says. “…There is a point where the growers can’t ship anymore and at that point, we will know what we need to purchase.”
Sarah Sampson is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.
