If you live in southern New
England and you ever thought a florist or floral designer did an especially
imaginative job choosing the flowers for a wedding, flower show, or garden club
presentation, you should probably include the Boston Flower Exchange in your
thanks. At the ‘flower exchange’, as
most people refer to it, the aforementioned florists and designers can browse
13 wholesalers under one, 75,000-square-foot roof that is wall-to-wall displays.
The flower exchange is a
venerable institution that has its origins back when greenhouses in the
hinterlands around the city grew summer and winter blooms (notably carnations,
roses and camellias) for the carriage trade.
Over time, ‘outside’ flowers were allowed in.
Today, the source of most
flowers is South America and the Netherlands.
They’re flown in overnight and, beginning at 2 a.m., the flower exchange
wholesalers collect their orders at Logan Airport, bring them to the market,
sort them, and have them ready for sale before 5 a.m. I can attest that at 6 a.m. the flower
exchange is in high gear. By 9 a.m. the
stalls are mostly bare and the market formally closes at noon.
The beauty of the flower
exchange is the breadth of offering and specialization. One stall specializes in ‘tropicals’, another
in orchids. If you can’t find the right
shade of the specific flower you need at Chester Brown, try Cupp & Cupp or
Carbone. If you need 100 dozen roses in
the exact same hue of cream for a wedding next Saturday, explain you need to
the salesman at Riccardi and let them ensure your order is filled.
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| Inside the flower exchange |
Although not part of the Boston
Flower Exchange, life for those florists and designers is made easier still by
the presence of Jacobson Floral Supply.
Housed in a supermarket-sized building adjacent to the flower exchange,
Jacobson offers everything imaginable (except cut flowers) someone could
need.
You would think that every city
would have its own flower exchange. You
would be wrong. Most cities – including
most major cities – have widely dispersed wholesalers, requiring florists and
designers to either establish a strong rapport with one of those wholesalers, or
else to drive from one end of (say) Houston to the other to find what they
need. Out-of-town designers who come to
Boston for events have nothing but high praise the institution, and uniformly
wish it was replicated back they came from.
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| When the flower exchange (center, with Jacobson's just to the left) was built, the neighborhood was seedy |
You would also think that the future
of the Boston Flower Exchange would be as secure as the North End’s Paul Revere
statue. Again, you would be wrong. The flower exchange led a peripatetic
existence for decades before settling in the old Cyclorama Building in the
South End in 1923. By 1963, however,
that building’s future was threatened by redevelopment and the Exchange’s Board
of Directors went looking for a permanent home.
They found it a mile away in a
desolate, 5.6 acre plot hard by the elevated Southeast Expressway amid gritty, abandoned
industrial loft buildings. Built on land
that was once part of Boston Harbor, a functional, one-story building with
ample parking and loading docks opened in 1971.
Jacobson Floral Design built their store on an adjoining plot. For more than four decades, florists and
designers had a readily accessible, central market where the lone complaint was
crime (ameliorated by a steel fence around the perimeter of the property, and
then more recently by a much improving neighborhood).
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| Today, the flower exchange sits atop a 'hot' property and has been sold |
But in the second decade of the
new century, that part of South Boston has become exceptionally attractive to
developers. In September 2014, the
Exchange’s Board received an unsolicited offer of more than $35 million for the
site. Other offers quickly
followed. In May 2015, the vendors who
make up the Board voted overwhelmingly to accept the offer from a
still-unidentified buyer. The transfer
and closing of the market will take place before December 2017.
The reality of the closing of
the market – and the apparent likelihood that there is no replacement facility
on the horizon – has started to sink in among those who have always relied on
the flower exchange. One highly regarded
North Shore floral designer mused about the situation during a floral
demonstration last week. His favorite
wholesaler – one who has always found just the right blooms for demanding
clients – is contemplating retiring rather than relocating; a devastating change
that would add an unwanted, new layer of complexity to what is already a
demanding business.
I think about the fifty-plus
amateur designers who enter the competition at the Boston Flower & Garden
Show on each of its two entry days in March.
They receive no compensation for their design; only a ribbon or two. To earn that ribbon, they’ll spend many hours
(sometimes several dozen), creating a unique design at home. Then, the day before they enter their design
in competition, they converge on the flower market between 5 and 6 a.m. where
they’ll spend an hour or more searching out the perfect blooms among several
wholesalers. Those flowers will go back
home where the designers will take a day to ‘condition’ them. The following morning, those same designers
will descend on the Seaport World Trade Center at 5:30 a.m. to create their
masterpieces. All for a ribbon and the
satisfaction of having created something beautiful for others to admire.
That frenzy of competition is
replicated across half a dozen other ‘major’ shows across the region each year
(Topsfield, Marshfield, Barnstable), plus several dozen club shows where the
more ambitious designers eschew supermarket flowers in favor of those from the
flower exchange.
A change is coming. An end of an era. This is one case where the future – at least
for floral designers – may not be as bright as the present.
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