A Chaotic Work Experience Week!
I chose to do my work experience here at Daizy, and it has been a hectic week!
We started the week off with 4 funeral deliveries, 6 pieces in total, for Austin's funeral directors in Stevenage. Then, we headed back to the office to refill the van with boxes to clear the flowers for a wedding party near Buntingford.
Janis, Julie and I hopped into the van and headed off to clear the marquee. My job was to empty the 200 coloured bud vases of flowers which had been the table decorations, which had been placed nicely together in the marquee and made it a lot quicker. Whilst I did that, Janis and Julie were taking down a 40ft garland, which was suspended above the tables. Once we finished, we helped move flower pots from a display outside the dance tent to a cooler place for later use by the clients.Then we packed the van with everything to be returned, and headed off for a well deserved lunch!
Tuesday was less hectic, as we went to the wholesalers after dropping off another funeral order at Austin's, this time in Welwyn. The wholesalers was way bigger than I thought it would be, and the fridge full of flowers was so much colder than the heatwave outside. At one point, Julie came out with a massive trolley, which to me looked like she was revealing Jurassic Park. We bought trays of plants for a job on Thursday, which will form the backdrop of bridal photographs for a registry office. We filled the trolley and loaded it into the van, after paying for it, of course. With one or two more stops to pick up other items for the job, we then went back to base for a cup of tea.
The next day, We went through the behind the scenes of the business, from how the funerals and other orders come through to how the flowers needed are ordered and counted. It was really interesting going through all this, and I was able to see what the technical part of the job was like. Floristry really isn't just playing with flowers!
On Thursday we went to the registry office to replant and maintain the plants in the courtyard, as they use it as a backdrop for bridal photographs when a wedding is there. We had taken everything we had bought from the wholesaler's on Tuesday, and then moved it into the courtyard to start planting. My Job was to empty some of the pots entirely, as they weren't needed anymore. The roots of the plants completely matted the bottom of one of the pots, making it a lot harder to empty! After that, I put slate over the bamboo pot, as it stops the soil from becoming too hard too quickly which helps the plant absorb the water better, and also made it look better. After 3 strenuous hours of working, we packed the van back up and went back to base once again.
Finally, on Friday I wrote up the funeral orders onto the whiteboard in the office and helped with writing the flower list for next week. This was important as if it wasn't done all the orders for next week could go wrong.
My final task was to make a floral arrangement by myself, which in this case was a basket. First I 'greened up', which was basically putting the foliage into the foam to give it shape, and to provide a base for the flowers. I added Yellow Germini, White Lisi, Purple Statice, Limoncello and Code Green/Kermit Crysanthems, which all were the flowers I used. To finish it off, Julie showed me how to add a bow to the side of the basket it was in, and I had made a floral basket.
In conclusion, I've had a lot of fun working here this week, and I would like to come and help out in future sometimes.
