How did Celadon & Celery begin?

Celadon & Celery began sort of as a fluke. I came to New York to go to grad school and lost my loan when the financial crisis happened last October, and I needed to make money. I had a business in California doing the same thing, so with this being one of the few things I know how to do well and make money on, that’s sort of how it happened. I was freelancing for several companies and making enough connections in the flower market to start doing my own thing. I got one really awesome client that introduced me to all of her Upper East Side friends, and that allowed me to launch my business.

Where did the name Celadon & Celery come from?

My parents live in Belize, and my mom and I were sitting around one afternoon, and I love, love, love, love the word celadon, and the actual color of celadon. If you know anything about what celadon is—it’s pottery from China—it looks exactly like the ocean in Belize. So celadon is the same color as the ocean in Belize where my family lives, and celery is the same color as celadon, and they’re both green. It was a cool and chic way of saying we’re a green company without saying “Bess Wyrick’s green eco-company of flowers.” I thought it was a clever way to make a statement of being eco- and green without having to say “eco” or “green.” That’s how that came about—I chose a food like celery because we use a lot of edibles in our arrangements and décor. It really fit with my beliefs about sustainability.

What makes the company green?

We compost, and we recycle as well, and our flowers come from local and sustainable farmers in the New York/New Jersey/Massachusetts area. And when we can’t get local stuff, we buy from VeriFlora, which is a certified organic company that has outposts around the world. I prefer to buy more sustainable than organic, because it’s hard for me to justify buying roses from Holland even though they’re organic, because they go on a plane—they’re shipped here. I don’t know how ecofriendly that really is. So we try to buy locally and be sustainable. The other fun thing that we do is that we recycle everything—we use products that we find in Dumpsters, or that we find at the end of parties that people are throwing away. Anything that can hold water, we use as a container. We just did a recent project where we made a succulent vertical garden for a client, and all of the materials came out of a Dumpster in Union Square. We try to be clever with the materials that we’re using, and we try to reuse as much as possible.

What are some of your favorite materials to work with?

Right now, as we’re getting into the fall season, variegated mint with purple brassica. I love using those two elements together. There’s also another plant, it’s called Mr. Pokeweed, and it’s bright hot pink with green berries on it. I love using that, the texture on it is phenomenal—it looks like something that should’ve been growing in the ocean. I don’t know if it’s actually pokeweed, or Mr. Pokeweed, but the farmer we get it from always calls it “Mr. Pokeweed,” so that’s what I refer to it as. Right now ilex berries are really in season, chestnuts are a lot of fun, and kumquats are great. A lot of times what I’ll do with kumquats and oranges is I’ll hollow out the fruit and put a tea light candle in it. Then I’ll light the candle so it adds a cool element of décor on a centerpiece. We’re in October, so we’re getting to a lot of the heartier, leafy plants, which I love using because the foliage is so beautiful. Sunflowers are really beautiful right now, dahlias are great—though they’re actually not local anymore, they’re coming from Massachusetts instead of from New York. But I guess they’re still considered more local than buying from Holland.

Which of the materials that you use would be easiest for someone to get?

Whatever’s in season right now—they can get dahlias, and they can get ilex berries, and they can get variegated hydrangeas and chestnuts and sunflowers. Tulips are coming back in season. If they want to buy locally, they can just go down to the flower market, or go to any of the wholesalers who do retail in the afternoons, and pick up the local stuff. Right now bear grass is in season. Bear grass, curly willow, certain variegated plum branches, magnolia. Right now it’s a great harvesting time for branches because there’s so much that’s in bloom and changing colors that people cut back on their trees to get ready for the winter months. Hyacinth is coming in season, which has a beautiful smell and comes in several colors—white, orange, pink, and purple. Pumpkins are in season—pumpkins, corn, all that stuff is coming in season since it’s getting towards the holidays. We did a fun photo shoot the other day with ranunculus, which is my favorite flower—it has about a thousand petals on it, and they come in so many colors. We did a beautiful arrangement with ranunculus on the outside of the vase and corn husks on the inside of the vase. Corn husks have a very similar texture to ranunculus.

What’s your design process like? How do you put together a piece?

[laughing] I have no design process. What really happens is, I’m the creative director, so I’ll meet with the client, I’ll go to the venue space, and I’ll figure out what flowers I’m going to use. Then I’ll meet with my business partner, who has more skill in terms of production—she’s definitely a better florist than I am. I’ll know what I want it to look like, and I’ll tell her what I want it to look like and make a sample piece. And what she’ll do is tweak it and make it perfect and reproduce it. I have to say that I’m most inspired by the natural surroundings of the environment, like the way a tree grows, or the way bushes grow, or the way moss hangs off of a tree. I’ll try to mimic that in my floral décor—what I see in photos in Natural Habitat. Our signature piece is sort of asymmetrical—we do a lot of things that are flowing over the vase, hanging down and crawling out onto the table. We make a lot of landscapes on tables. I think I’m most influenced by nature—I look at tons of books, and I look at a lot of peoples’ websites and photos of trips, of places they went. I’ll look at the trees, and I’ll look at the way things hang. So if you look at a lot of the stuff that we do, I think it represents [nature]. In terms of my design, that’s where it comes from. I do like topiaries, which is sort of a stalk of flowers all bound together sticking straight out of a vase with rocks around it. That would happen in a pond, but we try to keep the other things that we do as natural looking as possible, because that’s how the flowers were intended to grow, and that’s how I intend to use them.