Bring on the Blooms

On Tuesday morning, the small parking lot behind the cheery, ribbon-bedecked storefront of Rose Garden Florist on Route 9 was crowded with vases of deep red roses and frothy baby’s breath, clusters of balloons and stuffed bears.

A step away in her workshop, owner Tracy D’Amico was deftly stripping leaves from stems, surrounded by buckets overflowing with every imaginable bloom. It was the morning of Valentine’s Day, and in the florist business, that means one thing: work.

With ten times the usual delivery volume, Tracy and her husband Michael have to quadruple their staff to serve everyone who calls looking for just the right gift. But despite the hectic nature of the job, there are smiles all around.

“People are at their best on Valentine’s,” she said. “It’s fun.”

Tracy had been a florist for a decade and a half before she and Michael started thinking seriously about striking out on their own. Michael, who worked in heavy construction in the warmer months and spent winters helping make deliveries for the shop where Tracy worked, found he had an eye for flowers himself. 

“One day I was looking at these two arrangements,” he said. “They looked kind of similar, but because I’m a real picky Italian, I was thinking, ‘I’d buy that one for my mom.’” 

As it happened, the one he was partial to was one of Tracy’s. “And so the gears started turning, and I was thinking maybe we should do this for ourselves,” he said. They had family in Ocean County, and in 2004, they bought their current location, settling on Barnegat as a promising, growing area. 

Eight Valentine’s Days later, they’re at the helm of a bustling business.

The holiday is crucial for any florist, especially in a tough economy, when the rising cost of gas and other expenses means delivery-based businesses are feeling the pinch. Tracy estimates they do about 6 percent of their total annual business around Valentine’s Day.

It’s physically exhausting work – “the word I like to use is ‘schlepping,’” Tracy laughed – but with extra help, they put together each arrangement by hand, adding their own special instructions on flower care to each bouquet. At this time of year, it’s all about roses, but Tracy said her customers know they can also count on getting more unusual blooms from her – for instance, the exotic-looking protea she was adding to her current project, a bouquet of peach and purple blooms.

The work remains satisfying and fun for them, Tracy said.

“If you’re in this business a while, it becomes part of you,” she said. “It gets in your blood. There’s just something about being tied to flowers and tied to nature.”

Michael said he loves taking summertime trips to the Jersey flower farms where the couple buys many of their supplies. The best part of the job, he said, is the surprised looks he gets from brides and other customers when the see him – a powerfully built guy – bring them their perfect arrangements.

“Bottom line, I like to see people happy. And knowing it came from me or from her,” he said, nodding to his wife, “that’s something.”