Rebecca Shelly remembers the first time she was upset by the sight of hundreds of peonies and roses. It was after an elaborate wedding reception in North Carolina last year as she was cleaning up the room. “The floral budget was really high, and nobody had planned for what to do with all of the flowers after the wedding,” said Shelly, who at the time was working for a wedding planner.
“We collected as many as we could in our cars, but there were so many left over, they would have filled two U-Haul trucks,” she said. “The venue needed to be cleared out, so we were throwing all these stunning peonies into black trash bags. I felt terrible about the waste.
” Then late last year, Shelly and her friend Laura Ruth both were mourning their fathers who had recently died when they began talking about the bouquets that arrived at their homes in Harrisonburg, Virginia. “We were struck by how many flowers our families had received,” said Ruth, 38, adding that the flowers were a comfort but made them think about the nationwide problem of floral waste. In their grief, they hatched a plan.
“What if we could repurpose the flowers and brighten the day for somebody else?” asked Shelly, 32. In March, the pair started a nonprofit, Friendly City Florals, to reuse flower arrangements donated from weddings, funerals and floral shops in the Harrisonburg area. Shelly and Ruth now devote several days a week to picking up flowers, freshening the bouquets and delivering them to senior.