How to Buy Flowers in Barcelona, Spain for a Cruise Ship

By Casey Cole­man Schwartz

Casey worked on a cruise ship called the Sea God­dess I owned by Cunard Cruise lines in the 1990s. Her first job as assis­tant social direc­tor includ­ed duties as the on-board florist. This was an adver­tise­ment that appeared in many mag­a­zines, includ­ing The New York­er.

Often dur­ing our class­es or client meet­ings, I am asked how I became a florist. Here is a trip down mem­o­ry lane about a time when I had to pur­chase flow­ers at the flower mar­ket in Barcelona, Spain.

A twelve-year career at sea began as direc­tor of chil­dren’s pro­grams, pro­gressed into roles as crew purs­er on board many ships and then, social direc­tor on board a lux­u­ry ship in the 1990s.

While serv­ing as crew as the assis­tant social direc­tor on board the ultra lux­u­ry cruise ship Sea God­dess I, one of my many hats I wore was to cre­ate the fresh flo­ral arrange­ments for all the cab­ins and the pub­lic rooms of the ship.   The Sea God­dess, a Cunard Line ship, had to be brought in for reg­u­lar main­te­nance (called dry dock) into Barcelona, Spain.  This is a process where the ship is pulled out of the water and placed on blocks to be repaint­ed, re-car­pet­ed and some­times gut­ted for an updat­ed look.

This was my fourth of eight dry docks dur­ing my 12-year career chas­ing sum­mer on the oceans of the world. Each dry dock holds a won­der­ful mem­o­ry. We were in Barcelona for sev­en days and I had the lux­u­ry of stay­ing in a hotel for the dura­tion of the dry dock, but knew once we fin­ished the work, guests would be join­ing and the ship would need all new glo­ri­ous plants and fresh flowers.

Sea God­dess Crew pho­to in the 1990s. Casey became the Chief Purs­er after a short time as the Assis­tant Social Direc­tor.  She had worked as a purs­er aboard a num­ber of Car­ni­val ships pri­or to join­ing Cunard’s Sea God­dess crew. Casey is in the front row seat­ed sec­ond from the left.

The flower mar­ket in the Mer­cabar­na in Barcelona in 1992.

I found the whole­sale flower mart in Barcelona and made my way via train and taxi and met the man­ag­er. I was obvi­ous­ly not a reg­u­lar cus­tomer, nor would I be, so I had to explain who I was and why I need­ed to order mas­sive quan­ti­ties of flow­ers and plants which I would pick up in a few days. I also explained I would have my col­league, Mari­na, the head of house­keep­ing, with me when I returned to pick up our order and would need help deliv­er­ing the flow­ers and plants to the ship. The mar­ket’s man­ag­er was delight­ful. He hand­ed me a cup of cof­fee and intro­duced me to every ven­dor as we walked around the entire floor as I built my order for the ship.

Barcelon­a’s New Flower Mar­ket — pho­to from ArchDaily.com.

This was fall of 1992 and the Sum­mer Olympics had just been in town. The whole­sale mart had been there since 1984. It was vast, amaz­ing and the largest flower mart I had ever seen. By this point I had pur­chased flow­ers in many ports such as Monte Car­lo, Venice, Yal­ta, Stock­holm, Mom­basa, Sin­ga­pore, Bom­bay and St. Thomas. Sad­ly the flower mart in Barcelona at Mer­cabar­na burned down in 2001 and limped next door to a new space for a few years. In 2008 a new facil­i­ty was built and is an amaz­ing 44,000 square meters. The cen­tral flower mart in Barcelona has been a main­stay since the ear­ly 1900’s and I was bare­ly a blip in their his­to­ry, but am proud to have been just that.

Casey on board Sea God­dess I in her Chief Purs­er uni­form. She was one of the few Amer­i­can offi­cers in the Cunard fleet dur­ing the 1990s. Most of the offi­cers were European.

Mari­na and I returned to the mart and gath­ered all our flow­ers and plants, loaded up our lit­tle Euro van and scoot­ed to the port before the ship moved from the dry dock to the wet dock.  We made it just in time for Mari­na to board, and I was on the dock with fresh flow­ers out of water, know­ing they were going to need a fair amount of con­di­tion­ing! We cov­er how to con­di­tion flow­ers in our hands-on work­shops at our stu­dio in Tor­rance and at our guest appear­ances through­out Los Ange­les and beyond!

We design flow­ers for  wed­dings on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. The “Queen” is an orig­i­nal Cunard fam­i­ly ship, so it is quite nos­tal­gic for Casey to deliv­er flow­ers to her. Casey took this pho­to and post­ed it to her Sea God­dess Face­book page to share mem­o­ries with her for­mer shippies!

How to be a Flower Shop Girl — Pygmalion Style

Flower Duet featured Activity at Pasadena Playhouse’s Pygmalion, April 4, 2015

Flower Duet is pleased to host a lec­ture and hands-on work­shop before the 4 p.m. per­for­mance of Pyg­malion at the Pasade­na Play­house this Sat­ur­day, April 4, 2015.  You can pur­chase dis­count­ed tick­ets to see this time­less play about a flower girl who yearns for a rich­er life by learn­ing how to speak bet­ter. She ends up giv­ing her teacher a rich­er life by show­ing him how to feel and love.

Flower Duet will teach a group of lucky the­ater goers how to choose the fresh­est flow­ers, where to buy fresh flow­ers in Los Ange­les and how to make flow­ers last a long time in a vase. Each guest also has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn how to cre­ate his or her own bou­quet to take home.

For Pyg­malion dis­count­ed tick­ets, please use code: FD20 to receive 20% off.   We’d love to see you!

Buy tick­ets!

Link to pur­chase tick­ets is: http://www.pasadenaplayhouse.org/box-office/­main­stage/pygmalion.html

Flower Duet to be featured in the LA Daily Newspapers Saturday, April 4th, 2015

LA Dai­ly News

Flower Duet is fea­tured in a arti­cle com­ing out this Sat­ur­day, April 4th about why wreaths are for every­day and not just the hol­i­day seasons!

It will be in all the Los Ange­les Dai­ly News local papers includ­ing our own Tor­rance Dai­ly Breeze and online. Check it out!

April 11, 2015 Flower Duet Guest Lecture and Flower Demonstration at The Banning House Museum in Wilmington

A Day in the Garden- Saturday, April 11th

Come and join us for “A Day in the Gar­den” at The Ban­ning Muse­um.” FREE activ­i­ties include lec­tures (includ­ing Flower Duet for the 2nd straight year), gar­den-themed crafts, tasty sam­ples of botan­i­cal­ly inspired treats pre­sent­ed by our “Taste of His­to­ry” com­mit­tee and an intro­duc­tion to our new Cal­i­for­nia Native Garden.

They will also have a love­ly dis­play of blooms and vis­i­tors are wel­come to par­tic­i­pate by bring­ing exam­ples from their own gardens!

For more infor­ma­tion on how to par­tic­i­pate or to RSVP please call (310) 548‑2005.  The Ban­ning House Muse­um is locat­ed at 401 East M Street, Wilm­ing­ton, CA 90744.

Grow a Drought Tolerant Sustainable Garden by Visiting the Grow Native Nursery

With free work­shops through­out the year you can learn how to replace your lawn, sow seeds from native Cal­i­for­nia plants and have a gar­den that bees and but­ter­flies will love.

Grow Native plant nurs­eries are avail­able on the VA cam­pus in West­wood and in Clare­mont at the Ran­cho San­ta Ana Botan­ic Garden.

Locat­ed at 100 Davis Avenue the VA cam­pus in West­wood, upcom­ing work­shops include:

Spring Prop­a­ga­tion Tips

Sat­ur­day, April 11, 10 — 11:30 a.m.   FREE RSVP Required — Click Here

Learn basic tech­niques for prop­a­gat­ing Cal­i­for­nia native plants. If you want to learn more after the class, three-hour work­shops are offered in Clare­mont seasonally.

Design Details: Birds, Bees, & Butterflies

Sat­ur­day, May 9, 10 — 11:30 a.m.   FREE RSVP Required — Click Here

Learn about Cal­i­for­nia native plants that pro­vide food and shel­ter for ben­e­fi­cial insects and oth­er pollinators.

Replace Your Lawn

Sat­ur­day, June 13, 10 — 11:30 a.m.   FREE RSVP Required — Click Here

Stephen Bal­don­a­do pro­vides an overview of impor­tant things to know about replac­ing your lawn.  Casey and I worked togeth­er to replace her back­yard lawn with syn­thet­ic grass that is great for kids and pets. We’ll write about that next newslet­ter. Casey also ripped out the lawn in her front yard and replaced it with suc­cu­lents and grasses.

Where Do Your Flowers Come From?

An Info Graphic from SlowFlowers.com

Last month, we cre­at­ed an info graph­ic on What it Takes to Be a Florist? This month, we thought it would be cool to share with you this awe­some info graph­ic from Debra Prinz­ing’s Slow Flow­ers web­site. She sent it to us with per­mis­sion to re-pub­lish on our site in order to edu­cate con­sumers, flo­ral design­ers and event plan­ners on the flo­ral indus­try. We hope you enjoy this great col­lec­tion of valu­able infor­ma­tion on our cur­rent cli­mate in the world of cut flowers.

From the SlowFlowers.com Web­site — Where do flow­ers come from?

Newsletter Next Month — Weddings, Steampunk Flowers, Books, Tools and More!

In our May Newslet­ter, find out why this is called “Steam­punk Flowers”

We are in the mid­dle of a busy spring­time wed­ding sea­son, so we’ll fea­ture our usu­al book reviews, tools and show you what we’ve been up to next month! Stay tuned!