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Fall in Love with a Career in Floral Design

10/4/2017

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Vicki Beuth

With over 30 years’ experience teaching and lecturing flower design, Vicki Beuth, an FTD Master Designer, brings a full spectrum of knowledge of the floral industry.  As the original owner of Leechburg Floral Co. her shop has been putting good design to the forefront. 

​I’ve been thinking for a long time that I would love to share my knowledge and love of being a florist. Enter, Pennsylvania Floral Academy. Not a week went by in my flower shop without someone saying, “I’d love to work in a flower shop.” As an owner I knew how long it took to train a novice in between doing my own job. Often the trainer didn’t work out, they found out that it was really hard work being a florist or I felt they didn’t have the level of talent I needed for a very busy shop. Therefore a school designed by a florist for a florist position seemed like it might be good for everyone. To have an employee already knowledgeable in florist lingo, basic design elements, common houseplant identification, store window display, and selling techniques would be a person I as a flower shop owner would take a chance on. A person who has invested their own time and money into making it as a florist would be top candidates for floral shop employment. 
Vicki Beuth
​My goal is to not only prepare someone to became a florist, “a person who sells and arranges plants and flowers” but also to shed some light on our emerging profession.
 
For many reasons, it takes years to become a well-rounded florist. Flowers change seasonally as do design techniques. Just when you pick up speed designing with Christmas greens you’re on to tulips and daffodil designs, a very different design challenge. You only may get to do a specific design once a year, so you are always challenged. Truthfully, this was my favorite part of life in a flower shop. Everyday was different. Plans were often changed and our wholesalers were always giving us more and more interesting, beautiful options to design with. When you have the heart of an artist you get to feel, touch, and smell your medium (flowers) everyday, it’s really great.
 
Rainy and gloomy days were always my favorite in the flower shop. It’s hard to remain gloomy with beautiful bright and sunny flowers always surrounding you. This is just one of the many reasons I have always felt blessed to have found this career path.  
Rose Floral Design
​The mission of the Pennsylvania Floral Academy is to educate men and women in the field of floristry. My personal goal is to make the school the best in the country. We intend to certify candidates for employment in the floral industry. With an internship program to compliment the basic course we hope our graduates will find fulfilling employment as they desire. The idea if an 8-week internship program spins off my experience with many people I’ve trained over 30-years. As an owner I would have felt more confident to hire someone with a certification and internship experience.
 
The art of display has intrigued me since I was a child. My mother always wanted me to be a set designer. She had her own dancing school for most of my growing up years. Throughout my childhood I was exposed to theatre and dance performances in NYC on a regular basis. Flower shops exude display from windows to shelves to counter displays. The flower shop world is one big display challenge. Some shops are better than others, but display always exists where plants and flowers are sold. I used to moonlight at a local grocery store in my early days, setting up flower displays and making arrangements. I loved it. Display work should be taught to every beginning florist, but this takes time and patience. This will be a primary element in the Pennsylvania Floral Academy curriculum. Students will complete weekly display challenges. After 8-weeks our graduates will have some great new display ideas that will entice new and old customers into any flower shop. 
Rose and Carnation Floral Design
Our philosophy is, “Why have a showroom if you don’t showoff?” We are going to teach our students how to showoff their design skills on a budget. We intend to prepare candidates for the floral industry, elevate the status of floral education, and help each student develop their own panache (flamboyant confidence of style). 

Applications for the March 2018 semester are being accepted now through February 1st. Click HERE to learn more about our curriculum. 
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The Art of Floral Design

9/9/2017

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Vicky Beuth

​With over 30 years’ experience teaching and lecturing flower design, Vicki Beuth, an FTD Master Designer, brings a full spectrum of knowledge of the floral industry.  As the original owner of Leechburg Floral Co. her shop has been putting good design to the forefront. 

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I am proud to say I have been a florist for over 30 years.  I have always loved flowers and being creative, but never realized I would make a living with these passions.  Fortunately by pure fate, I took a chance and quit my fulltime job as an advertising rep and took a part-time job in a flower shop.  Recently divorced and with three young children, I believed in myself and fell in love with everything about life in a flower shop.
 
I was far from being a real florist, but I knew I had found my career for life. I rode my bike to work each day as the pay was $3.00 an hour. I swept the walk, cleaned the flowers and even got to deliver flowers. I had a good teacher and very talented designers around me, but I wasn’t allowed to design yet. I could watch and observe though. After I had de-thorned what seemed like an infinite number of roses (in actuality maybe 300) or stripped leaves from boxes and boxes of Chrysanthemums did I start to really know flowers, how they changed with time and how they looked in combinations. Handling flowers every day for me was and is still uplifting in every way!

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After a year and a half of being a shop girl I was allowed to arrange only at holiday time when the owner would hire extras to make the same arrangements over and over again. It was very tedious work but a very important aspect to designing a floral arrangement. It also built up my confidence and awakened me to the fact that I wanted to be a real florist. In a Floral Shoppe only the head designers were allowed to talk to brides or important customers. As I now could wait on customers and answer the phone with confidence I happened upon a very unusual customer.
 
She was older than me and said she was ordering flowers for a special occasion. As I took the order, it was really looking like a wedding order and I said to her “Are you sure you don’t want Kay to take your order?” She said no, she thought I could handle it because it was only a special occasion flower order. The owner said go ahead and I was ecstatic! When the customer picked the order up she was very pleased, as was I. So as it turns out, the order was for a wedding (a second marriage) and a very special occasion for all involved.
 
By now by confidence was soaring.  I knew I needed to move on and up. Through the flower grapevine I heard a shop in Freeport needed a shop manager so I applied. I guess they figured if I could manage three kids I could manage a flower shop. Boy were they wrong! As I arrived the first day I realized I was not only the manager, I was the designer, the cleanup crew, the shop girl – I was it. The part time owner only delivered flowers when called. I had never ordered flowers and had no clue on pricing. It was trial by fire on someone else’s dime. Enter Kenny.  The flower business is like a dinosaur business, every day we shop owners or buyers talk to our wholesalers; we get to know them on the good day and the bad days. They are our partners in so many ways. Sometimes you have wholesalers who are shady salespeople, but most wholesalers know they need to build a good honest relationship for a partnership to thrive. Then there are the exceptional wholesalers and I happened to fall into Kenny’s hands. He was a kind voice each morning that always asked me how I was and then ask me if I needed anything on the truck. In the flower business it used to be all orders had to be into the flower wholesalers by 9:00 a.m. so you could receive the order by 11:00 a.m.  How they manage to gather all their orders, pack the flowers gently, then load them on delivery trucks to your door in 2 hours is mind boggling! Anyway, Kenny was aware of my inexperience and he took the time to teach me what should be in my cooler every day, how many flower stems come in a bunch, etc. I could have easily ordered ten bunches instead of 10 stems. He helped me prepare holiday orders and listened to me vent my frustrations more times than I could count. Yet we never met for over three years and by this time I had really taken a chance and purchased my own flower shop. I owe a lot to Kenny and all the great salesman I’ve had over the years.
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Let’s back up a bit, I’ll tell you how I got into teaching and learning the craft of being a florist. The small size of my shop gave me free time to read all the florist publications. I expanded my knowledge of design and marketing from these publications. Also, being the manager gave me confidence! One day some ladies came into the shop and asked if we taught floral design, I was floored. I tried to keep the window interesting, but teaching? I stood up a little taller and said “We are considering it. Why don’t you leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you.” So in my usual I can do it mode, I talked to the owner and struck a deal. I would keep the money from teaching and they would make money from the flowers and containers. I put a sign in the window and I was up and running. Now I realized I needed some classes myself. So I started to study flower design, taking as many different classes as I could afford. When a ten-week course at Phipps Conservatory came up I jumped on it. This gave me a strong background in tropical plants and opened me up to the world of plant lore, another passion of mine.
 
Now I was teaching two nights a week and working five days a week. I felt I was ready to take a chance and go into business for myself. I wanted and needed the creative freedom.
 
I bought an existing shop in Leechburg PA. The shop was 13x30 feet. It had a two-door cooler, some metal display shelves and a small work area, but it had a wonderful tin ceiling and great display windows. It was very small but just the right size for me. I named it Leechburg Floral Company. I didn’t know one person in the town. I lived 15 miles away and had really only been living in Pennsylvania for six years. My family was back home in New York City, so I was a real outsider.
 
Enter Annie. Annie was my neighbor who was between jobs and husbands (lol). She said she would be glad to help even though I had no money to pay her at the time. We struck a deal, she lived with my kids and me and we worked at the business together. We had so much fun. Annie kept the books and we used her hatchback car to deliver. On days that were slow we’d sit on the store’s front stoop and dream of better days. During our first Halloween in Leechburg, we decided to have a haunted house, by then we knew the Clines, the funeral director and his wife Evelyn. I got up the nerve to ask him to borrow a coffin for a display in the store. He graciously said “Sure, but you’ll have to pick it up.” We couldn’t fit it in the hatchback so we carried it down Market Street. I’m sure we were the talk of the town! When people came in to the shop, some turned around and left when they saw our dressed up dummy and dry ice around this real casket. Like I said earlier, I wanted creative freedom!
 
Being a florist is about expressing yourself to the world. It’s about having beautiful things around you every day and it’s wonderful to work beside like-minded fellow artists that love plants and flowers as I did and I still do.

Click here to sign up for one of our upcoming classes. 
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738 N. Scenic Drive
​Sarver, PA 16055
724-525-4045
pafloralacademy@gmail.com
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