Episode 21
What does it take to turn a love of flowers into a successful floristry business? And how do you keep that creative spark alive as your business grows?
In the latest episode of The Flowery Folk Podcast, I had the pleasure of chatting with Natalie Gill, Meg Blancato and Erin Dollar, the team behind Native Poppy, a floral design business based in San Diego, California.
Known for their colourful, garden-inspired floral designs, beautiful retail flower shops and large-scale wedding and event installations, Native Poppy has developed a business that goes well beyond traditional flower retailing.
But what I really wanted to know was how they've managed that growth.
How do you run multiple flower shops? How do you find and train the right florists? And how do you build a business that continues to encourage creativity while still managing the practical side of staffing, buying flowers and keeping everything running?
We covered all of that, along with their new book, Flower Moments, which brings together their experience as floral designers, educators and business owners.
From a Home Flower Studio to Multiple Retail Shops
Native Poppy's story began in 2014 when founder Natalie Gill decided she'd had enough of working in corporate America.
Inspired by the floral designs she was discovering online, Natalie realised that floristry could be more than a hobby. It could be a career.
She left her job and started creating flowers from the living room of her apartment.
Like many people starting a floristry business, she had plenty of enthusiasm but was learning the business side as she went.
Two years later, as Natalie prepared to open her first retail flower shop, Meg Blancato came along.
Meg had little formal floristry experience, but she loved flowers and knew she wanted to be part of what Natalie was building.
Her first day was the day before Mother's Day, and the shop was absolutely packed.
Quite the introduction to retail floristry!
What began as a part-time job eventually developed into a business partnership, with Meg helping Natalie expand the business and establish its retail operations.
Then, in 2020, Erin Dollar joined the team and brought another set of skills that would prove particularly valuable as Native Poppy entered a very different period of growth.
Growing a Floristry Business Through Change
One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was hearing how Native Poppy adapted during COVID.
Like so many floristry businesses, they initially closed their retail operations, uncertain about what would happen next.
But with the ability to continue offering flower deliveries, the business quickly shifted towards online orders.
Natalie began making flowers from her garage, with a limited number of daily orders.
At the same time, Erin, who had experience running an e-commerce business, helped them expand their online gift offerings.
With the physical shops closed, they had shelves full of gifts that weren't being sold. Bringing those products online created another opportunity for customers to send thoughtful gifts alongside their flowers.
What began as a practical response to a difficult situation became an important part of the business.
It's a good reminder that sometimes the opportunities for growth aren't necessarily the ones we originally planned.
How Do You Manage Multiple Flower Shops?
Running one retail flower shop is challenging enough, so I was particularly interested to hear how Native Poppy manages multiple locations.
Rather than having each shop operate completely independently, much of their flower buying is coordinated centrally.
A floral department manager oversees ordering across the business, helping ensure consistency and reducing the duplication of work.
Flowers and foliage can also be transferred between locations when one shop has excess product and another needs more.
It's a practical system that allows the different parts of the business to work together rather than compete for resources.
Their team includes around 25 core staff members, although not everyone works as a florist.
There are people managing different aspects of the business, including retail operations, events, administration and other specialist roles.
And while individual florists may specialise in particular areas, they're also able to move between retail, workshops and wedding and event work when needed.
For anyone thinking about expanding their floristry business, it's an interesting insight into how important systems and team structure become as you grow.
Hiring Florists: Skills or Personality?
One of my favourite parts of the conversation was hearing how Native Poppy approaches hiring and training.
Over the years, they've experimented with employing people who have very little floristry experience as well as those who already have established floral design skills.
But one thing has remained important.
They want people who are kind, hardworking and willing to learn.
As Natalie and Meg explain, floral design techniques can be taught. Finding people with the right attitude and a genuine willingness to work as part of a team is another matter.
Native Poppy now has a more structured training program for its floral apprentices, supported by online education and established design standards.
This allows them to teach the skills needed to work within the Native Poppy brand while still encouraging florists to develop their own creative style.
I particularly liked their comparison to handwriting.
Everyone's handwriting looks a little different, but they're still communicating the same message.
It's an interesting approach to maintaining a recognisable floral design style without expecting every florist to create identical arrangements.
Wedding Flowers: Making Smaller Weddings Work for a Retail Florist
Another topic we explored was Native Poppy's à la carte wedding flower service.
Alongside their full-service wedding and event design work, Native Poppy offers a more streamlined selection of wedding flowers, allowing couples to order individual items such as bridal bouquets, buttonholes and other smaller floral designs.
It developed after customers began visiting the retail shop and asking whether they could simply purchase a wedding bouquet rather than book a complete wedding flower package.
What I found particularly interesting was how well this model can work alongside a retail floristry business.
When you're buying flowers for a single bridal bouquet, you're often purchasing more stems than you actually need.
But if you also have a retail flower shop, those additional flowers can be used in your everyday arrangements and bouquets.
That makes the model potentially more practical for a retail florist than for a wedding florist who works exclusively on events.
However, there's another important lesson here.
Although Native Poppy originally hoped their à la carte offering would be a straightforward online ordering system, they discovered that wedding clients still wanted personal service.
Even when ordering a relatively small number of flowers, couples wanted to speak to someone and feel confident that their arrangements would be right for their wedding.
The business now provides dedicated support for these smaller wedding orders.
The takeaway? Streamlining a service doesn't necessarily mean removing the personal experience your customers value.
Keeping Creativity Alive as the Business Grows
Native Poppy is known for some pretty spectacular wedding and event floral installations.
So naturally, I wanted to know how those projects come about and where they find the clients willing to invest in them.
Natalie spoke about her ambition to keep pushing her floral design work further, taking on larger projects and exploring what's possible with flowers.
She also admitted something that I suspect plenty of wedding and event florists will recognise.
Sometimes she puts more into a project than the budget really allows because she wants to create something that will help attract bigger opportunities in the future.
It's a familiar temptation for creative business owners, although not necessarily a sustainable business strategy.
And it highlights one of the challenges of running a creative business.
How do you continue developing your work and taking on exciting projects while also making sure the business remains financially viable?
For Native Poppy, part of the answer has been surrounding the creative vision with people who bring different skills and perspectives.
Some are big-picture thinkers, while others are more focused on systems, data and making the ideas work in practice.
It's that combination that has helped the business develop.
Flower Moments: A Floral Design Book About More Than Flowers
Towards the end of our conversation, we turned our attention to Native Poppy's new book, Flower Moments: Use the Power of Flowers to Celebrate, Entertain, and Share Love.
I'll admit, when I first received a copy to review, I was expecting something closer to a beautiful coffee table book.
But there's much more to it than that.
The book covers practical floral design knowledge, including flower selection, care and handling, floral mechanics and design principles.
It also offers creative projects for different occasions and stages of life.
What I particularly appreciated was its willingness to explore the less celebrated reasons people give flowers.
As florists, we often talk about weddings, birthdays and other happy occasions.
But anyone who has spent time working in retail floristry knows that flowers also play an important role during grief, difficult experiences and moments when people simply don't know what to say.
Natalie, Meg and Erin wanted the book to reflect those experiences too.
Their aim was to make floral design accessible to people with different levels of experience while encouraging readers to use flowers to connect with others.
Interestingly, their years of training florists, teaching workshops and developing online courses all contributed to how the book came together.
It's another example of how the knowledge developed within a floristry business can grow into something entirely new.
Flower Moments is scheduled for publication on 26 January 2027.
Explore Flower Moments on the Native Poppy website or in Australia at Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/flower-moments-natalie-gill/book/9781643265834.html
What Can Florists Learn From Native Poppy?
There are plenty of lessons to take away from this conversation, regardless of whether you're running a retail flower shop, working as a wedding and event florist or just getting started.
For me, one of the biggest is the importance of recognising that growing a floristry business requires more than being a talented floral designer.
You need good people, workable systems and a willingness to adapt.
But you also need to understand what makes your business different in the first place.
Native Poppy has continued to develop new ideas, from retail flower shops and weddings to education and publishing, while keeping its distinctive creative identity at the centre of the business.
And I think that's something worth paying attention to.
Growth doesn't have to mean losing the personality and creativity that made you want to work with flowers in the first place.
Listen to the Full Conversation
In this episode of The Flowery Folk Podcast, I chat with Natalie Gill, Meg Blancato and Erin Dollar from Native Poppy about business growth, staff training, retail floristry, wedding flowers and their new book, Flower Moments.
It's a relaxed and interesting conversation with plenty of practical lessons for anyone working in the flower industry.
Listen to: Inside Native Poppy: Growing a Creative Floristry Business
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