Episode 61: Alex Patriquin (Cass School of Floral Design)

Meet Alex Patriquin! He's part of the family business at the Cass School of Floral Design here in Watertown. We talk about the beginnings of the floral shop with his Armenian immigrant refugee grandmother (and her earlier venture of putting a lamp in every dorm room in Boston), some of the stories over the more than 75 year history of the three generation female-led business including growing up with his mother, Faith Cass, being the leading florist in the world (winning international floral design competitions), decorating the White House for Christmas and teaching in over 70 countries, Alex's own silicon valley journey (with his own company being in Y Combinator), how Cass has recently shifted its focus to education (though they've already trained thousands of florists since 1979), their sustainability and accessibility mission and goals, and more.

Find out more about the Cass School of Floral Design at cassflowers.com

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The first Creative Chats of the season is on Friday, September 5th and the first ever Watertown’s Open event is on Friday, September 12th. Come join in the conversations!

Transcript

Matt: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Alex Patriquin over at the Cass School of Floral Design. I'll let him introduce himself and then we'll get into the conversation.

Alex: 0:27

Hello, my name is Alex Patriquin. I'm with Cass School of Floral Design in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Matt: 0:33

And what is your role at Cass?

Alex: 0:34

My role at Cass is a general helper. I don't have a title.

Matt: 0:39

It’s not one with proper titles.

Alex: 0:42

No, not entirely, so I guess you could say I'm in charge of business operations now. It's a family business and I grew up in the business like my siblings and my mother. So it's always been kind of all hands on deck and doing different things within the business.

Matt: 1:00

Yeah, yeah, so let's go to that then. What was it like growing up around a flower shop?

Alex: 1:05

Yeah, it was great. I didn't realize at the time, but now I do, how much of a blessing it is to just be surrounded by flowers all day. There's been a lot of scientific studies that have validated what we already know, which is that flowers make us feel better.

Matt: 1:19

Yeah, makes sense. 

Alex: 1:21

Yeah, everyone kind of knows it intuitively. And growing up in the business also it's very busy. It's a lot of physical labor, getting flowers, processing them to get them ready to put into arrangements, to arranging them, to delivering them. It's all kind of a race against the clock as well, because flowers are always dying once they're cut. That's one thing I think a lot of people don't realize about the floral industry is just how hectic it can be because of that perishable factor. So it was very busy and very fun and colorful and smelled great, and you know, my family has been doing it a long time too so it was also enmeshed with lots of family stories and relationships with people from the community, from Watertown, from the Armenian American community, from the floral design community globally. So I feel very blessed. It was a fortunate happenstance of birth to be born into a flower shop family.

Matt: 2:18

Yeah, were you like four years old sticking flowers in? Or like how old were you when you were doing stuff?

Alex: 2:23

Yeah, I mean pretty much from the time I could walk I was given some job to do. Maybe not sending arrangements out to customers yet, but.

Matt: 2:32

Hopping on your bike, driving them around. 

Alex: 2:34 

Yeah, that would be tricky to deliver flowers with a bicycle. But we walk them down the street. Actually, just this morning I was walking some pieces down the street. So, yeah, I was doing that from a very early age, delivering.

Matt: 2:47

Cool. Well, let's go even farther back then. So how did this place start?

Alex: 2:50

Yeah, great question. So the business started in 1948. My grandmother, Mary, she started it. There's a bit of a funny story there. So she was an Armenian immigrant refugee. She was actually an orphan. So she made her way to Massachusetts, like a lot of people from her generation, and got married, and had a great life here in the community.

Alex: 3:15

World War II broke out, so all the men went away to war and the women took their jobs. So you probably have heard of Rosie the Riveter. It was that era. Yeah, so my grandmother worked in a department store in downtown Crossing when the war broke out and she was given a sales job and then made a sales manager during the war because she was really good at selling lamps. She was working in the lighting department of all places. So when the war ended and the men came back, a lot of the women who took these jobs, including my grandmother, were asked to take a demotion. So they still wanted her to sell, but they wanted to reduce her commission and also take away her management responsibilities and give them to a man. Well, she was a very fiery woman, as you can imagine, having survived such great ordeals as a young child. So she wasn't having that. Yeah, and so she quit.

Matt: 4:09

No smash lamps on the way out, though.

Alex: 4:11

No smash lamps on the way out. But she did spin this experience into an opportunity. She went and contacted the lighting distributor that sold to the department store where she'd worked and she bought them out. She bought all of their inventory and she rented trucks and then she sold each of those lamps to the returning GIs who were going to college in Boston on the GI Bill. So saying is, you know, that she put a lamp in every dorm room in Boston. So that was a big one-time wave of business that she created. But then they all had lamps. So she needed something else and that's when she started the flower shop, which was 1948.

Matt: 4:55

Yeah, and how'd she decide on flowers? How'd she go from lighting to flowers?

Alex: 4:58

Great question. I think she was always a woman who appreciated beauty and community and positive energy, and I think that flowers drew her. I also think that there weren't very many options for women at that time who wanted to open a business. It was a flower shop or a hair studio, a styling studio or something like that. So it was, you know, I think, both a push and a pull for her to open up the shop.

Matt: 5:24

Yeah, and then how about, so has it been in this spot on Mount Auburn Street the entire time?

Alex: 5:28

No, so it started in Brighton in Boston and then they moved to Watertown in the early 70s. They were just down the road a little bit where one of the bakeries is now, that was the flower shop. And then this building that we're in now, they moved in 1979. I know actually, because it was the week I was born.

Matt: 5:47

Wow ,that's an eventful week for them.

Alex: 5:51

Yeah, I guess it was. So, yeah, 1979, they moved into this location here at 531 Mount Auburn Street.

Matt: 5:57

Yeah, and so then they got the other generations involved over the years.

Alex: 6:02

Yes. So when my grandmother started the business, it was very much as one where her family could help. And so my mother and her younger brother, my uncle, both grew up working in the flower shop. So from a very early age my mother was not just carrying deliveries and helping with the cleanup, but was actually arranging and was even just managing the store on her own as like a seven-year-old girl back in the day when my mother had to run an errand or something like that. And a lot of funny stories about that. But she really started developing her craft for floral design very early and her career over the decades really took off. And now my sister is actually in charge of the business, so it's a third generation female-led business.

Matt: 6:48

Yeah, yeah. And do you have any ideas why each generation has stayed with it? Because I know there are other family-owned businesses that they don't get passed on down to generations. What has it that has made it stick? Why has your generation been with it?

Alex: 7:00

Yeah, it's a great question. For me personally, it's the appeal of working directly with flowers and people. I have worked many years in technology. Growing up here, I had all of this experience and didn't realize, like how rare it was, and then went and worked for many years in California and New York, in the technology industry. So for me, coming back, it's about that community and that sense of well-being that comes from working with flowers and being close to them.

Matt: 7:28

Gotcha. So how long were you out of Watertown for?

Alex: 7:31

Yeah, I left after college. Basically I didn't come back until last year. Yeah, so a couple of decades. I started a company called EventGeek and it was a software as a service platform. It's actually still running. And in many ways it was an attempt to kind of bring some order to the chaos that I experienced here. The platform helps event managers manage the logistics, the budget, and so on, the collaboration, for in-person events. At least that's how it started. And doing that with software to make things easier, less error prone.

Matt: 8:06

Gotcha, yeah. Another way where you can see some of the overlap like your grandmother had the lighting to flowers, you can see how those skills can cross over too.

Alex: 8:16

Absolutely yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and it's funny how things have come full circle. So after starting this company in Silicon Valley, we were in a very prestigious program called Y Combinator. I remember Sam Altman, the guy from OpenAI, he actually interviewed us and was one of our coaches, and it's funny to see him now in all the headlines. It's such a different world.

Matt: 8:37

Give us the inside scoop on that. No.

Alex: 8:39

I wish I could. I don't even think Sam knows. It's a black box, right. But yeah, it's really come full circle. I've had kind of a wild ride. So the story goes, I started this company, it was called EventGeek in 2016, in-person event management, logistics and so on. We grew very quickly over the next four years and then 2020 hit.

Alex: 9:01

It was, I think, the first time in the world that almost all events, in-person events, were canceled or postponed. So our business pretty precipitously fell off a cliff. It was a very trying time. We had to rethink a lot of things, including, unfortunately, having to lay off some people, which was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done. But we managed to pull it together and the company survived and is still going and thriving. In 2020, we had a few dozen employees. We were based in San Francisco. We're growing very quickly. The pandemic hit. We had to lay off almost everyone. We relocated from San Francisco to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we rebranded the company from EventGeek to Circa and we also added in virtual events and other elements that helped our customers meet during the pandemic. That was a crazy time.

Alex: 9:53

2020 to 2022. There was a tidal wave of virtual events and tools to run them. We were one of the leading tools for that. It was also a time when we moved from really in-person to virtual in terms of the company side and the team. So relocating to San Francisco Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Matt: 10:15

Couldn't leave it behind, huh. 

Alex: 10:16

Yeah, guess not. It brought our costs down, but it also allowed us to work more remotely as a team, hiring people from all over. And New Mexico is a beautiful place, a place where I think, like, in-person experience is really important because it's so beautiful. So we brought marketing leaders from our customers to the International Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We have a hot air balloon and that's probably one of the most terrifying things I've ever done is flying a hot air balloon. But I do it and I'm learning to be a pilot, to kind of conquer that fear. And yeah, it's great to go back every year, but in 2022, as people started to get together in person and didn't need to be outside or a thousand feet in the air where the ventilation was really good.

Matt: 11:05

You guys went way beyond the six feet. Okay.

Alex: 11:08

Yeah, we did. Yeah, you know, as people started to get back together again, I experienced kind of a whiplash. It was so crazy, the kind of tidal wave of virtual events that happened and pulling all of these all-nighters to create a new product for the revolution, the digital transformation, collaboration, and meetings. I was a little burned out and so, as people started to just get back together again in person as soon as I could, something in the pit of my stomach said well, you knew that was going to happen all along. Never really replaced the magic of meeting in person, never really replaced by the software. And I just needed a break.

Alex: 11:48

At about the same time as well, the business here was struggling. So the business was started as a flower shop and then the School of Floral Design opened up in 1979. The flower shop had been on the street level for many years and, of course, when the pandemic hit, the retail took a hit as well. So, coming back from that, along with some health issues with my family, it was clear that business needed to reposition for the future. And so I was kind of called back to Massachusetts to be closer to family and to work on updating the business to be more relevant for this future.

Matt: 12:23

Interesting. So how was that transition then? I mean, it's a different go go go. You know, different go go go with however many people you're dealing with in Silicon Valley versus, you know, go go go here, but in like a more face-to-face interaction, right.

Alex: 12:36

Yeah, absolutely, I would say it's not go, go, go here. It's nice, it's a lot more friendly and easygoing. Yeah, I would say it's a lot more relaxed. I mean, right down the road is MIT and Inman Square. There's tons of biotech even here in Cambridge and Watertown. So it's not all in Silicon Valley, even though that's just the shorthand, but it's a place here at the School of Floral Design where anyone can come and relax and connect with people and nature. 

Matt: 13:05

Yeah, so you said it's kind of shifting from a pure floral shop to now it's a school of design. So take us through that transition.

Alex: 13:13

Absolutely, yeah. So about a year we've really prioritized the school ahead of the retail business and it's the first year that that's been done since the school was created in 1979. So it's been around for decades. We've graduated tens of thousands of students. I think we're actually one of the largest floral design schools in the world in terms of alumni network. And it's been growing and growing, but it's never been the top priority. Now it is, and we've done a lot of things that you can see and feel that emphasize the school.

Matt: 13:46

And why did you make that switch?

Alex: 13:48

Yeah, absolutely. So the flower shop business really developed as a model a couple of generations ago, even before the internet. People love flowers. I think people will always want flowers, but how they get them has changed a lot.

Alex: 14:03

First there was just the flower shop at the corner where you would walk over in person, maybe make a phone call. Then there was the internet. And then with social media and kind of the democratization of business and the rise of entrepreneurship that's enabled by the internet, there's a lot of people now interested in doing freelance floral design, kind of on the side, for events and weddings, not necessarily as their primary income, although I think a lot of people aspire to do that and have that flexibility. So we've come back from the dip that we took in the pandemic in terms of the retail ordering, but we really see the future as being one that's more grounded at empowering people to create their own floral designs as a way of appreciating them rather than purchasing them. People will still purchase them to give as gifts and so on, but increasingly people want to engage with floral design themselves directly. And so that's how we've positioned the business for the future.

Matt: 14:59

Yeah, gotcha. Maybe let's go back a little bit to the floral shop before you kind of prioritized the school. So what was that like? What were some success stories in the first few decades of the business in that?

Alex: 15:10

Yeah, absolutely. So that's really a story about my mother. Her name is Faith Cass. Mentioned before she kind of grew up in a flower pot. Her mother had started the flower shop in 1949 and she grew up working in it, designing from a very early age. As a teenager, she decided this is absolutely what I want to do with my life and she began to compete in floral design competitions. There's, probably not a lot of people know this, but there's the industry associations in the floral industry that have competitions, design competitions. Well, she won those, first locally, then nationally, then internationally.

Matt: 15:49

What does one of those look like? Is it like, you know, when you watch one of those cooking shows like, here's the flowers, you have 30 minutes to make an arrangement?

Alex: 15:56

Somewhat, yeah. They come in different formats, but that's the idea basically is you're giving it an assignment. Sometimes it's just a theme like, say, hot summer or something like that, and you've got to go from there to creating an arrangement that will wow the judges and the crowds. And so she did that again and again to the point where she's the leading florist in the world for a while. She did the White House for Christmas, a couple of years. She traveled internationally to over 70 countries to teach floral design.

Alex: 16:25

You know, one of my earliest memories is as a kid my mother would travel often to Europe and Asia to teach floral design to big rooms full of people, and I got to tag along. Sometimes they pulled me out of school and so I got to go to all these amazing places: Japan, China, Italy. And I remember one of my earliest memories is standing in the back of this big auditorium in Japan. There's my mother at the front and she's teaching Ikebana, which is an ancient art of Japanese floral design. And she's definitely not Japanese herself, doesn't speak a lick of Japanese, you know, and there's all of these Japanese women in this auditorium just wrapt at her teaching. And I thought to myself this is, this is crazy. Now I know, this is not usual. 

Matt: 17:13

Not a normal mom activity.

Alex: 17:15

No, no, not a normal childhood. So I've taken that experience with me and since coming back really realized how valuable it is. You know, not just in terms of our family's experience, but I think it's kind of this global community. When FTD started, when my grandmother was doing the flower shop back in Brighton, that was the first time there was really an international network of businesses. In fact the very first international bank for merchant banking was, I might need to correct the record on this, but, so in fact one of the very first international banks was for FTD, for transferring funds between florists internationally. And they would travel to each other and they would go on trips together all over the world.

Alex: 18:01

So when my mother was teaching internationally, she was always learning there as well whether it's the local flowers that grow or the design styles, and then bringing that knowledge back to Watertown to here in the school. And in fact a lot of students and fellow teachers from all over the world will come and study here and stay in Watertown. You know, Watertown, being next to Cambridge here in Massachusetts, is kind of an international crossroads and a place for the global community to come together. And with floral design being sort of a relaxing outlet too, we've had so many hobbyists who have those full-time jobs as engineers or scientists come in and enjoy that too. So it's really been a global community of floral designers that has come here to Watertown and then gone back out in the world. And that's alongside the steady river of people here from the local community, from Watertown, from New England, all over New England, who come to take our classes. We have a class going as we speak right now and there's 15 students down on the street floor learning professional floral design. They're in their second day of the training program. So with everything going on in the world, I think it's just increasingly important that we have these kind of connections.

Matt: 19:09

Yeah, and so can you take like a single class or you have to take like a program? Do you get a certificate at the end? Like, what is that like?

Alex: 19:17

Absolutely, yeah. So we have two kinds of classes. We have the classes where you can just come in and have fun, and it's one class. It's a few hours. Bring a friend, you don't need any skills whatsoever and you'll leave with a beautiful arrangement that you've created yourself. We have those about every week and we're adding more to the schedule. And then we have our professional training.

Alex: 19:38

This is the program that's kind of the gold standard for becoming a professional florist. Most of the florists that operate in Massachusetts have either come to us or sent their trainees to us. So it's a very well-established program that really has worked a lot over the years. And we're updating it with things like specifically for independent freelancers and social media and so on, but the fundamentals there are really strong. And so that's a three-week course, if you do it during the daytime. You can take it at evenings as well, if you have a full-time job and you're looking to make a career transition, which is very common. People wanting to get away from working in technology, in front of a laptop. I'm one of those too. I took the professional course last year actually. Yeah, it was great.

Matt: 20:19

Yeah, it all come back to you from your youth. I mean, you weren't obviously making big decisions.

Alex: 20:23

Yeah, so when I was a kid I wasn't doing much in terms of the arranging. I was really a delivery guy, which is a whole set of skills unto itself. You know, there's a reason why you can't really order great arrangements or even good stuff on some of the delivery apps because it's not like delivering a bag of groceries or a pizza. It takes special care and handling and every arrangement's a little different. So it's kind of a game of physics when you get it in the car. And, you know, the streets around here definitely add a layer of challenge. 

Matt: 20:51

You can't go up the hills and

Alex: 2053:

Yeah, construction and so on. It’s getting better.

Matt: 20:56

Yeah. And like winter, summer, the heat, the temperature, humidity, all that stuff.

Alex: 21:00

Yeah, these days, you know, well, these days we've curtailed delivery, so we only deliver to Watertown unless it's a special event. But last week we did a big event at Trinity Church down in Boston in Copley Square and, yeah, we jacked the AC in the van before we hit the road.

Matt: 21:15

What about sourcing all the flowers? That is probably something no one knows anything about who's listening to this podcast.

Alex: 21:20

Yeah, great question. So we buy a lot of our flowers wholesale. Increasingly we're buying from local farms and we've actually started gardening here on the property and another farm that we have to grow our own flowers. And we really think that's the future. It's not just about the tariffs that are hitting Colombia. Most of the flowers in America come from Colombia, about 60%. But it's not just the tariffs and the trade. It's the emissions that come from flying all those flowers around the world, whether it's Holland or from.

Matt: 21:52 

Yeah, because they can't sit around on a shipping container. They have to be done quickly.

Alex: 21:56

It has to be done quickly. It has to be refrigerated. When the flowers get here into the shop, it's a race against time because they're perishing. They're dying the moment they're cut.

Matt: 22:05

How many different types of flowers do you have?

Alex: 22:07

Well, today we can get any type of flower that's available for purchase. It's just a matter of how much you want to spend and how long you can wait. But we really try to focus our sourcing as locally as we can. So we're going to have our first class with flowers that we've grown. Actually, it's going to be in October, and we're growing gourds for hordes of gourds. It's going to be flower arranging with gourds and so on.

Alex: 22:31

Yeah, and then one of my projects in the near term, if anyone's listening, is to reach out to local farms and even small growers that are interested in working with us to sell their flowers. But you know, here in Massachusetts obviously it's not year-round growing season, right. So you know you can get into some calculations around, you know, should we be buying gladiolus grown in a greenhouse here in Massachusetts or should we get them shipped from California? Which is better from an emissions accounting standpoint? Those are the sorts of questions we can minimize by trying to design both classes, education, and arrangements that we make with really local and also seasonal considerations in mind, what flowers are in season now. And it just so happens that usually the flowers that are in season are the ones that you would expect to see in an arrangement around that time.

Matt: 23:21

Because a lot of these traditions came from when that was all you could do.

Alex: 23:25

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, the Christmas wreath is with evergreens that look great in the winter.

Matt: 23:31

Right. And then so is that like something that you teach to your students, like the sustainability and that focus, or is that?

Alex: 23:37

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, that's so that's been one way that we've been updating the program, especially the professional training program, so that those florists can go out in the world and carry the sustainability mission to their customers and also to their students too. Another thing that we've really embraced is kind of like a yoga teacher training, but for floral design. So, as we think about our mission in the world, it's really big right. How do we bring the psychological and wellness benefits of working with flowers to everyone? And how do we think globally but act locally, so, starting in our local community. Accessibility is probably our primary value in terms of our mission.

Alex: 24:17

Very accessible practice. Almost anyone can do it. Disabled folks, even blind people can smell and feel their way to creating something that they love in terms of a flower arrangement. Certainly all ages, although you probably don't want to give a knife to some kids yet, at least without adult supervision, but they can cut the stems for them. And old age, it's a lifelong practice that you can continue to grow into. So, yeah, accessibility, community, and sustainability. Those are what we really see as our mission globally. But how do we make that happen by implementing practices and training locally? Well, we start there and I think we teach the teachers, right, like a yoga teacher training. I've done a lot of yoga over the years, done a couple of teacher trainings. It's not only just a way to deepen your practice, but it's a way to share with others this positive thing in the world. So as we think about the future, we really want to be creating not just floral designers but floral design instructors.

Matt: 25:14

Now, is there any other main chunk of the school and business here that I haven't hit on that, you know, I might not just know from the outside?

Alex: 25:23

Well, one thing is, we've brought the classroom downstairs to the street floor, so now you can actually see it from the outside.

Matt: 25:29

Right, it just used to be the showroom before.

Alex: 25:31

Yeah, so our building here has three floors. There's the basement floor where we do the retail and have the big refrigerator with all the flowers that come in. There's the street floor, which used to be a retail showroom where you could walk in and say I want to buy an arrangement, like a typical retail flower shop. Then there is the third floor, which was the school. We flipped the second and third floors so now when you walk in you see a schoolroom, and when you drive by we have a lot of windows on our corner here, you see classes and students, like are downstairs right now learning floral design.

Alex: 26:04

So that's a very visible way that we've reprioritized the business. Some other things you may see is lots of additional buckets for handling extra plastics and reusing plastics. A flower shop is already a very low margin business and so as much gets reused as possible just from an economics standpoint. But we've now taken that up another step and really tried to get to a zero plastics, zero waste, and I think by the end of the year we should be there. Also removing plastics from the curriculum so that we're not teaching future generations to rely on them. There's still a lot of work to be done there, but those are both kind of visible ways that we've embraced this new mission, or updated mission, I should say.

Matt: 26:45

Yeah, and where did this sustainability focus come from? Like, was this driven by economics? Was it driven just by personal value? Like, where did that come in?

Alex: 26:54

Oh, I think, growing up in a flower shop, you just have an appreciation of nature that's built into you. My very first company, while I was still in Boston, that I started was an energy efficiency startup. So I've always been kind of an environmentalist and done a lot of, you know, nature appreciation. I also really like climbing mountains and spending time in nature and, yeah, to me those things are just second nature, I guess. So I'm not sure where that came from, but yeah.

Matt: 27:21

Cool. Is there anything else on your list?

Alex: 27:24

Yeah, I was just checking to make sure we got everything. So you asked about a surprising change and some behind the scenes. The surprising change question was interesting because it was like an approach to my work, which I really like this question.

Matt: 27:38

Listeners, I'll say, like I asked them, one of the questions I send them beforehand was like what's something that's changed in your approach to the work that you do? So, yeah, go ahead.

Alex: 27:44

Yeah, so I will say when I got back a year ago and I first started, I said there's a lot of things here that need to be updated. And we've done great progress in them. But I didn't quite appreciate how compelling it is to work with your hands and your mind when doing a floral design. So it's the combination, really, of hand and mind. And I know that's MIT's motto and so on. But it's really true.

Alex: 28:11

You know, yoga, you're trying to kind of silence your mind and achieve more of a flow state. This is true with floral design as well, but it requires a bit more creativity than yoga. You know, you don't necessarily want to get creative when you're in a full stretch. But floral design it asks you to be a little bit more active in your creativity and working so closely between your mind and your hand where you're inserting stems and greens into an arrangement. It has just an immediate psychological benefit that I think anyone can grok. And for me now I've become addicted to it. So I do it every day, almost like a yoga practice. And I was really surprised by how reliable it has been. It's quite powerful and I would encourage everyone to try it once.

Matt: 28:57

Yeah, what would you say to maybe the people who are listening and they're like, flower arrangement that sounds beautiful, but like I'm not creative?

Alex: 29:04

Absolutely, yeah. So one of the great things about floral design is that it's super accessible to everyone. Anyone can do it. It's pretty easy to create a basic arrangement. You don't really need to have a whole lot of creative skills. The secret there is that the flowers do most of the heavy lifting. So even if you just grab a bunch of flowers and toss them in a vase, literally like don't even think about it, it still looks pretty good.

Alex: 29:29

And when we see photos on Instagram and so on of people who've made arrangements or who've done, you know, more of a naturalistic kind of country farm to table style where they do that, we're not necessarily looking for like the design fidelity. We want to see that they had a great time. And that's pretty evident from the way people take these pictures, you know. So don't worry about it. I mean, we're here to have a good time, like there's no pressure. And just remember, the flowers are literally doing like 80% of it. So you don't even really need a design class, which is crazy for me to say as a design school employee.

Alex: 30:04

But just being around flowers has great benefits. And if you want to take the next step and start to artfully arrange them, you'll be even more rewarded. But don't worry about it.

Matt: 30:15

Yeah, yeah. Any tips for those people who have a home garden or anything?

Alex: 30:25

So we have a gardening series coming up, one of our first lower price classes. So we want to offer lower price classes to the community and the first class to do that is going to be how to design and plant your own garden so that you can grow your own flowers and continue to save on costs and make all of this more accessible. So that class is coming up in September with our neighbor who is a master gardener. She consults for Mass Hort Society and other very well-known gardening clubs. And she'll be teaching folks who live here in Watertown or anywhere really, how to think about utilizing their space whether it's just like a stoop even, or a deck, or a patio, or a rooftop, or a front yard, or even a big yard. How to utilize that space in terms of a garden plan so that you can grow your own flowers and food as well. And that class is going to be under $25. We're trying to make it as affordable as possible.

Matt: 31:12

What are your normal classes?

Alex: 31:13

So yeah, normal classes run anywhere from $65 to $350 for that one class and it really ranges depending on the flowers and the time. So one of our classes is creating a big archway, you know, a seven foot archway, right. So that's a more expensive class with a lot more flowers and so on. But our $65 classes are great value. It's two and a half hours. You will meet people who may become lifelong friends. You will leave with a beautiful, big bouquet of flowers that you've arranged yourself, some skills to do it in the future. And, yeah, and we have different classes in between for intermediate skills and other kinds of flowers that may be in season.

Alex: 31:53

Another interesting class we have coming up is the Hawaiian Tropicals class. So these are flowers that only grow in Hawaii or tropical environments and we bring those here so that people can really get creative with some beautiful flowers, protea, haliconia, big, bright, colorful, think Hawaiian tropics, and how can you arrange those so that they look great and can be moved around safely and maintain their design? This is a class we have coming up in a few days. That's more of a mid-price class. I think that's $150, that one.

Matt: 32:24

Gotcha. And then what's your most popular flower? How about that?

Alex: 32:27

Oh, probably the rose. 

Matt: 32:28

Still the classics.

Alex: 32:29

Still the classics. Yeah, so Valentine's Day is the biggest day of the year for the retail flower world, and then Mother's Day, and then red roses are the biggest item. So just right there, from that one day alone, roses are the most popular flower at any given flower shop. The peonies are also very, very popular in the spring around Mother's Day. Peonies only really bloom in June, or at least they did before science got involved and made them more available. We had peonies in January this year. It was crazy. I was taking pictures of them in the snow. But really the best, most beautiful full peonies are in June. It depends on the season. 

Matt: 33:03

My wife’s is sunflower, so where's that in the rank? Is that a popular one?

Alex: 33:09

As you can guess, sunflowers come up pretty high up. And we actually have a sunflowers class coming up, so. And yeah, sunflowers are also one that you can grow here in Massachusetts. So we have some sunflowers growing in the backyard right now. It will be hopefully ready to use in that class.

Matt: 33:23

Cool. How big is your gardening space that you have?

Alex: 33:25

It's not big. That's because we're doing it to learn how to do it and to share how to do it, not necessarily to provide the flowers. I mean, I think in some ideal scenarios, people are bringing flowers that they've grown themselves here. Obviously, it requires a lot of time and even luck that we can't rely on every time. But behind the scenes it's really a question of where are we getting these flowers and how do we make that part of this mission to make things more accessible, more sustainable, more community-oriented.

Matt: 33:55

Yeah, that that sounds great. Cool. Was there anything else you wanted to throw out there before we wrapped it up?

Alex: 34:01

I just want to say I love what you're doing with this podcast and, you know, we've met through Porchfest and Watertown, which was just an awesome way for the community to come together. And Watertown is just a really cool place. I've traveled all around the world, I've lived in many different places and, coming back, I really appreciate this community so much. People who've been here forever, the new people, the families, the young people, old people, all ages. It's just great to be here and I love that you do this to bring the community out to meet in person and to celebrate what we have. So thank you, Matt.

Matt: 34:33

Yeah, thanks for being part of it. And if people want to find out more about you, where should they go? I mean, your location here is at.

Alex: 34:41

We're right here on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown, 531 Mount Auburn Street. We're halfway between Harvard Square and Watertown Square. You can take the 71 bus from either direction. We also have parking here and hopefully getting bike racks. A little plug, hopefully somebody from the city can help with. But the best way to learn more information is first to go to our website, cassflowers.com. We're also happy to take calls, emails and walk-ins when we're available. But certainly our new website, cassflowers.com, is going to have the most up-to-date information.

Matt: 35:13

Great. I'll put that in the show notes so people can click right through. Thanks for sitting down and sharing your thoughts and stories. So that's it for my conversation with Alex. You can find out more about Cass where he mentioned. I also have that link in the show notes and if you'd like to hear more of these episodes you can head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. Have all the episodes and information on the two live podcast events coming up in September. Creative Chats will be back at the Mosesian Center for the Arts and I'm starting a new series called Watertown's Open in collaboration with the Watertown Business Coalition and City of Watertown's Senior Economic Planner, and that's going to be over at the Get Lively Health and Fitness Studio here in Watertown. Again, you can find out all information about those events, if you're into the arts and creativity, check out Creative Chats, and if you're into business and entrepreneurship, check out Watertown's Open. Link will be in the show notes and at littlelocalconversations.com. You can also sign up for my weekly newsletter there and if you'd like to help support the podcast, it's always appreciated and there is always that link, support local conversation in the menu.

Matt: 36:15

I'd like to give a few shout outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor Arsenal Financial, which is a financial planning business that is owned by Doug Orifice, who's a very committed community member here in Watertown, and his business, Arsenal Financial, helps small businesses, busy families, and people close to retirement. So if you need help with any of those, you can reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast, so I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org and massculturalcouncil.org.

Matt: 36:58

And a couple more shout-outs to promotional partners. First one goes to Watertown Business Coalition, they’re a nonprofit organization here in Watertown that's bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. You can find out more about them at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. And again, you can check out that September event, Watertown's Open, live podcast event. Information is out on my website and on the Watertown Business Coalition website. And lastly, promotional partner, Watertown News, which is run by Charlie Breitrose here in town. Great way to stay up to date with everything going on in the city. It's an online local newspaper. Check that out at watertownmanews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.