You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

If you're a rose, you've come a long way baby!

Especially considering that over 80% of flowers purchased in North America come from South America.

That's a long way to travel, for a huge number of flowers!

Let's examine how a rose gets shipped from the farm to your home.

First, the blooms are cut at the farm level in Colombia. Each individual stem is manually cut; pruned from the bush one at a time. They are then bundled into groups of 25 stems, 10 bundles per box for a total of 250 stems per box.

Each box is then trucked to the airport in Bogota. The planes are loaded with 2200 boxes or 550,000 stems, for shipment to Miami. And that's just one plane...they come into Miami about once every hour.

Once arriving in the U.S., the boxes are then inspected to ensure the contents actually contain flowers...no "extras" (remember what Colombia is known for?)

The boxes are then trucked to local Miami warehouses, and segregated with boxes of other flowers for trans-continental shipment. Roses from Colombia, carnations from Ecuador, leather leaf from Costa Rica, and hundreds of other types of flowers loaded into refrigerated semi-trailers.

Then the real trip begins...

 

According to Google Maps, the trip from Miami to Vancouver should take over 56 hours driving non-stop.

 That's less than 3 days...but who is going to drive continuously for that long?

It takes two drivers, each driving 12 hour shifts while the other is snoozing in the sleeper compartment. Not an easy way to make a living!

From Miami to Atlanta, to St. Louis, to Kansas City, to Salt Lake City, up to Seattle and finally with flower delivery in Vancouver at a local wholesaler. It's pretty easy for local florists in Surrey, New Westminster, Burnaby, Langley, White Rock, Richmond, North Vancouver & West Vancouver to pick up their roses.

But often the trip doesn't end in Greater Vancouver, as local couriers must then pick-up and deliver to Victoria, Kelowna, Castlegar, Prince George, and even Prince Rupert which can add another travel day.

Let's say your roses have finally arrived at Simon Says Roses Florists in Victoria.

Now what happens?

Well, the "fun" has just begun to get your blooms into shape for retail sale.

Check out our next blog entry for flower processing done by a professional florist.