Local florist prepares for Valentine's Day

Standing in a pile of discarded petals, stem tips and green leaves, Judy Phegley places a red rose snugly in a seemingly jammed vase. Her daughter, Lisa Riggins, is close by, putting the finishing touches on a different bouquet. Several completed arrangements rest on a table nearby, some with balloons and boxes of chocolates. Judy’s 4-year-old shih tzu, Oliver, stirs and barks as customers come into the store.

Behind them in the workshop, employee Kelly Watt adds a new order to a growing stack of forms — another bouquet to make for someone’s sweetheart.

“It’s such a mess on the holiday,” Judy says, surveying her store. “Valentine’s Day is our busiest time of year. Mother’s Day is the second busiest.”

Judy, having worked more than 30 years as a florist, is charged every year with creating a Valentine’s Day staple — floral arrangements — and works furiously to have them completed by Feb. 14.

Judy’s Flowers and Gifts, a shop off Third Street on the west side, is usually closed Saturdays. But Judy’s staff, which includes her family members, is working overtime. From the time their Valentine flowers arrived to Tuesday’s last delivery, they will have worked an 80-hour week and completed about 150 bouquets.

The holiday rush, Judy says, is a guessing game. Unsure how many arrangements they will sell, she makes a bulk order for flowers, greenery and more, and then accepts orders for bouquets until they estimate they will run out of inventory. By Saturday afternoon, they were getting close to that cut-off.

Judy and her daughter laugh as they work — pulling dead petals off roses, trimming stems and spritzing the flowers with a finishing spray.

As they work, they express their frustration and amusement at customers who ask for last-minute orders and delivery.

“Everyone wants them on the 14th,” Lisa says as she cuts a strip of ribbon to tie around a vase. “No one wants them sent a day early. And then they call on Monday or Tuesday and can’t understand why we can’t take their order, that we’re booked.”

The flowers that end up in each arrangement, Judy says, are grown in South America. They are kept in a large, humid cooler but slowly brought out to make room for the arrangements. By Tuesday, the entire cooler will be full of vases, and most of the roses, carnations and chrysanthemums will have been used.

Judy and her daughter can make dozens of different bouquets of various sizes for Valentine’s Day, weddings and other events. Judy says she most enjoys making large arrangements — the most memorable she’s done included six dozen roses.

“It was in a great big, huge container,” she says of the bouquet. “My husband delivered it, and the lady says ‘I have no place to put this container,’ so she said she’d give away the flowers and have us come pick up the container.”

Judy was a stay-at-home mom looking for work when she was hired by another florist in Bloomington. As it turned out, she was good at it and soon after bought the business for herself, she says.

“She does have a knack for it,” Lisa says of her mother. “She’s very creative.”

It takes skills to put together a bouquet, they both say, that some of their competitors don’t have.

“I think even if you go to school for it, I think you have to have a knack for it,” Judy says. “Cause I’ve hired some people who went to school for designing, and they didn’t know what they were doing.”

Judy, who is not sure how much longer she will be in the business, says she is proud of her family’s work. Her daughter has worked at the shop since it opened, and her husband and son help deliver during the busy holiday season.

Rarely, she says, do her long-standing customers complain about their bouquets, and the store’s attention to detail sets them apart from others.

“I know what my flowers are,” Judy says. “The grocery stores are just a draw. They can afford to sell them so cheap because they order in such volume. They order for all stores. They don’t care if they make any money off it.”