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 care homes, hospitals, counseling centers, mental health agencies, schools and emergency responders in their area.
They also create floral arrangements in their kitchens with blooms cut and donated by local gardeners. Judy Leaman of Harrisonburg donates snapdragons, coneflowers and lisianthus from her backyard flower patches. “I have a huge yard, and I’m happy to share because I know that faces are going to light up when people receive these bouquets,” said Leaman, 68, who heard about Friendly City Florals from WHSV News on Facebook.
“Residents in nursing homes are always happy when somebody brings them flowers,” she said. “It tells them they’re not forgotten.” Ruth and Shelly are not the first to repurpose flowers: A Virginia doctor collects flowers and donates them to her hospital patients, and a group in North Carolina gathers leftover flowers from local grocery stores.
But the pair hope the idea catches on even more around the country. “It just makes sense,” Shelly said, noting that floral bouquets can help alleviate stress and depression. “It’s a simple thing to pick out what’s wilted, add some of our own (flowers) if needed, and share the joy one more time,” said Ruth, whose own kitchen is usually spilling over with donated zinnias, daisies and dahlias.
“We’ve put the word out everywhere that if you have too many flowers and don’t know what to do with them, we’ll take them off your hands,” Shelly said. The donated blooms are always welcome at the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in Harrisonburg, said Abigail Cave, the center’s life enrichment program manager. Ruth and Shelly have even brought in buckets of flowers so residents can design their own arrangements, she said.
“It’s a creative way to give our residents joy and purpose,” Cave said. “Seeing all those flowers instantly brightens up their day.” Resident Dot Misner, 90, said she enjoys the days when a fragrant batch of flowers is dropped off at the retirement community.
“It’s nice to come back to my room and find a place where I can enjoy the flowers all day,” she said. Shelly and Ruth recently filled dozens of vases with funeral flowers donated by the family of Caly Guyer, 17, a server at the Bridgewater Retirement Community in Bridgewater, Virginia. Guyer died tragically in a car accident last month.
“Caly was well loved — we put the flowers on every table in the dining room so every resident could be included in honoring her memory,” said Jeremy Douylliez, the center’s director of marketing. “It was an absolutely lovely gesture for the family to donate the flowers, and for Friendly City Florals to create new arrangements for us,” he said. “Flowers help enrich the lives of our residents and help them to feel they’re a part of the community.
” Shelly and Ruth occasionally take their children with them to drop off the donations, hoping to pass along the tradition of sharing something beautiful with strangers. “When we drop off the flowers, everybody oohs and aahs over them,” said Ruth. “They’re really touched by the gesture.
One woman kept saying, ‘Really? These are for me?’” Shelly said she grew up hearing stories about her great-grandmother who grew a large variety of blooms in her garden every year, then cut them and delivered them in small vases to a hospital in Virginia. “She was doing this in the 1930s and 1940s, so I’m happy to continue that tradition in 2024,” Shelly said. “If our flowers give one person a few moments of happiness on a difficult day, then it’s all worthwhile,” she said.
.
