Florists prepare for busy Mother’s Day

With social distancing the new reality, many people cannot celebrate Mother's Day in person. Rancho Mirage Florist owner Mark Weinstein says he’s planning for the busiest Mother’s Day in 20 years.

“They can’t take mother out to lunch, they can’t have a family gathering, so I think the next best thing is flowers,” he said.

Tammy Vradenburg, owner of Lilies in Palm Springs says her shop has also been busy with orders for the holiday.

“I love being able to make people happy, make people smile by delivering flowers to them,” she said.

But ordering flowers looks a little different this year due to the coronavirus.

“For the last two months, we’ve been shut down to the public as far as coming in to our shop, but we’ve still been able to provide deliveries and complete all of the orders that we typically would,” said Vradenburg.

“We call the recipient, we leave it at the door and they pick it up, so there’s no contact,” said Weinstein.

The biggest challenge has been the supply of certain flowers, especially imports from places like South America and Holland. 

“Luckily I’ve been able to get a lot of beautiful flowers from my suppliers,” said Weinstein.

Vradenburg suggests ordering a designer’s choice arrangement.

“That way we can select the freshest flowers that are available to us, because we don’t want to promise a particular flower that we’re not able to get, or even if we are able to get it, it’s not of the best quality,” said Vradenburg.

While opening their doors again is part of Governor Newsom’s phase two, florists have been able to operate under the agricultural sector, which is considered essential.

“The agricultural laws that include the floral industry, so that’s how we were able to operate with closed doors,” said Weinstein.

“Maybe after Mother’s Day, as other stores are able to open, we can get back to normal, but for this particular holiday, we’re just going to do website orders and phone orders only,” said Vradenburg