Virginia Pals Save Flowers From the Landfill, Redeploying Them to Bring Joy

August 20, 2024 journo

Repurposed peonies, ready for delivery in Harrisonburg – credit, Friendly City Florals

A pair of Virginians who found themselves habitually dismayed by the amount of floral waste they saw over a series of weddings and funerals decided to launch a small nonprofit to reuse them.

Friendly City Florals delivers flowers to hospice care homes, hospitals, and other events like funerals and weddings to make sure that the joy and special feeling a vibrant bouquet inspires can continue to do so as long as there is color in the petals.

The story begins when Rebecca Shelly, an experienced wedding industry worker, was cleaning up in the aftermath of a wedding reception in North Carolina last year, and was agonizing over stuffing hundreds of perfectly perky peonies into black garbage bags.

She saved as many as she could, but as Shelly told the Washington Post, one could have filled two U-Haul trucks with them all. This sense of regretful waste continued earlier this year, when Shelly and her friend Laura Ruth were grieving over a tragic double loss—both their fathers had passed away in the span of a few months.

The residents of Harrisonburg, Virginia, were remarking over how many bouquets of flowers had arrived at their house over the days.

“What if we could repurpose the flowers and brighten the day for somebody else?” asked Shelly, 32, who along with Ruth, launched Friendly City Florals. “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.”

The pair now spend several days a week traveling to halls, houses, and venues to collect floral arrangements that would otherwise be thrown out. They bring them back to Shelly’s home, pick out any wilted stems, and replace them with fresher flowers before driving the bouquets out to those who need them.

Donated flowers spill over Shelly’s kitchen counters in Harrisonburg. (Friendly City Florals)

“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 which they specialize in.

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Washington Post spoke with staff and residents of several locations Friendly City Florals frequents, including the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in Harrisonburg and the Bridgewater Retirement Community in Bridgewater, all of whom said the flowers were genuinely day-changing joys.

The non-profit also accepts donations from at-home gardeners, or anyone who has spare blooms to spare.

“Especially in nursing homes, that population often they’re socially isolated more often than other communities. They don’t have space for their own greenspaces, there’s just a lot of needs there. And so we found that bringing florals into them, they get visitors from it, they just have some greenery, some flowers in their room. We just hear so much feedback about how much joy it brings them and how much they love it,” Ruth told WHSV 3.

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