J Schwanke’s Life In Bloom

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by the following... ♪♪ At home.

♪♪ At work.

♪♪ Or anytime.

♪♪ CalFlowers is a proud sponsor of where flowers and wellness go hand in hand.

We have fresh in all our stores, from soups and steaks and all things flour to all things flowering.

Custom fresh arrangements designed by our in-store florists at Albertsons Companies.

With additional support from the following... PassionRoses... Suntory Flowers.

♪♪ Today I'll visit an old friend in a new location, arrange flowers with a city supervisor, and highlight some uniquely local blooms.

♪♪ ♪♪ I'm J Schwanke.

Welcome to "Life in Bloom."

"If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair."

Flowers in San Francisco will always be synonymous for me.

The song from 1967 and the Summer of Love may be what is recalled by many.

However, my connection between the city by the Bay and flowers is much deeper and more personal.

Growing up in a family flower business, we attended many industry conventions in many places throughout the U.S.

and even internationally.

Among the many destinations, one stands out as categorically my favorite.

I first toured the San Francisco flower market at the age of seven, in 1967, and fell in love.

Having been born at a flower convention -- true story -- it wasn't necessarily the vast array of blooms that turned my head, although there were many and many were out of the ordinary.

I was used to seeing more flowers than the average bear any and every day of the week.

But what pulled at my heart was the sense of connection that emanated there.

The flower industry is relatively small and everyone knows everyone, especially back then.

And friendships are often easily formed and often lifelong.

Florists speak of their flower family, and it's a thing.

Even considering all of that goodwill, there is something about the family I know as the San Francisco flower market that is next level for me.

I was beginning to wonder if there was nostalgia for the building that wore its age like a comfortable sweater that I had happily put on many times over my life.

What I realized on a recent visit to the brand-new location is that my love for the San Francisco flower market lives not only in the flowers, but in my heart and the hearts of all the family of the market.

♪♪ Imagine working in a place like this among all these beautiful flowers to experience every day.

Now imagine the challenges if you were in charge of the flower market with dozens of vendors, all specializing in different kinds of flowers, and customers looking for the perfect blooms.

And it's your job to keep everything running smoothly.

A little daunting to think about.

Now let's take it a step further.

What if it was your job across town to a new space?

That's just what happened here.

Two of my wonderful friends are the ladies behind the scenes at the San Francisco Flower market, Rose Robinson and Jeanne Boes.

Let's visit with them and learn all about the process and this beautiful new space.

Rose, this is amazing.

I know.

It's beautiful.

It really is beautiful.

I know.

Even though it's a utilitarian building, it's beautiful.

We've kept the feel of the -- the traffic.

People can come and they can shop, but it's also a very modern building.

It's a facility that aids in distribution as well as all the different small businesses can bring in their product.

So, what was your role in this?

So I work with Jeanne Boes.

We work in -- We help put this market together.

We keep the vendors going.

We keep our customers able to move in, move out, move their product out.

We just make all of the vaccines happen for this market.

This all happened because you and Jeanne had a vision.

Only somebody like Jeanne could bring together the city and the community all together to make this happen.

What is your job here at the marketplace?

So, my job is property management, basically, but I'm in the flower industry and I manage the San Francisco flower market.

Most people in the Bay Area love the flower market, if you say anything about the flower market, they'll tell you I grew up there, or a relative worked there, or somebody owned a flower shop, or I bought my wedding flowers there, or I got graduation leis there, or baby shower parties.

A lot of the folks that grew up in the city are of Italian descent, Irish descent, the Chinese.

A lot of flower-using populations have lived in San Francisco for years.

In fact, in the '70s, San Francisco had the most flower stands and flower shops of any U.S.

city.

You had a very good person in Aaron Peskin.

Supervisor Peskin.

So, the flower market would if it wasn't for former Supervisor Peskin.

Aaron Peskin is the former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which is the legislative body within the government of the city and county of San Francisco.

What do you think was the biggest challenge to get the move to happen?

Well, San Francisco is completely built out.

There's not a lot of space.

It's become a very expensive real-estate market, and finding a location was an incredible challenge that took a number of years.

Remember that the old flower market location was cited for a huge two-million square-foot office development at the height of the boom.

This is all prior to the pandemic.

Correct.

And so they were forced to go find another location.

And it took years of looking at different places and a hard-fought agreement with the developer that I helped play a role in, that made sure that the developer had to get them off to a good start in a new location.

Wow.

Everybody is so delighted.

Everybody.

If it's customers, if it's vendors, if it's truck drivers, it's everybody.

Everybody's elated.

Well, how can we not be?

I mean, it's really beautiful.

It is.

It's bright, it's colorful.

It's a really happy place.

For people who are retail florists that have sales licenses and stuff, this place is open when?

We open, on average, about 4:00 a.m.

Okay.

Yeah.

And we then -- we open to the public on Wednesdays through Saturdays after 8:00.

So Wednesdays through Saturdays after 8: 00, general public can come.

That's correct.

What's your favorite thing about this new location?

My favorite thing about this new location is the same favorite thing about the old location, which is the people.

The people are what make this place so great.

Everybody knows each other.

It is one huge, sometimes dysfunctional, but absolutely loving family.

It is so diverse.

It is like the diversity of San Francisco, different races, different backgrounds, many of them who have intergenerational in the family, you know, in the flower business.

It's just remarkable.

Italians and Chinese and Japanese and Latino.

And it's a -- It feels like a home.

It feels like a home.

Oh, it's palpable when you walk in.

It is.

It's just -- This is a family of flower people.

Yeah.

I am really, really fortunate.

I honestly love my job.

If I'm in a bad mood and I come to work, I never stay in a bad mood.

It's got to have something to do with flowers.

Flowers make people happy.

It's true.

But honestly, I love the vendors.

I love the customers.

I love all my coworkers.

It's all about how the customer feels when they walk in the door, how our tenants feel, and where we're going to keep to get Americans enjoying more flowers more often.

It's everything and more than you told me it would be.

Thank you, J. Thanks for coming to see us.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

♪♪ There are a myriad of health and wellness benefits that go along with flowers.

Homes that have flowers in them have less arguments.

If you're sick and you have flowers, you'll get better faster.

If you get yellow flowers, you'll get better faster still.

Wow.

So this tradition of bringing flowers to hospital beds actually has a medical benefit?

Absolutely.

Seniors who are surrounded by flowers will enlarge their circles of friends.

They'll be more apt to engage someone with something that's ailing them.

There are even flowers that activate memory.

And as we're cutting flowers and putting them into a vase, our body releases endorphins that make us feel less stressed, more Zen-like.

Just what I need.

When you give the flower to someone else, they release dopamine.

And so it makes them feel better.

So shall we arrange?

If you teach me, I'm ready.

I like to give people tips and tricks as we're going along.

Because that's the way -- I need a lot of them.

Okay, my favorite first trick is structure.

And so with your Grevillea that you have there, I have the Agonis over here.

But one of the things that's important is when I strip things, I always take off what's going to fall below the water line because it's going to help the water from getting bacteria.

Right.

Get all nasty and stinky.

Number-one enemy of our flowers is that bacteria.

So also with this, I'm going to cut this.

Guy's a little bit shorter so that we go this way.

What happens when I put a couple pieces of foliage in my arrangement?

Now, when we do this, we've created a structure that's going to hold our flowers in place.

See, I would have done it opposite.

I would have thought you put the big flowers and then you stick that in at the end.

So I just already learned something.

♪♪ ♪♪ So you're going to add that all at once?

I love that.

Okay.

That was my thought.

I know.

I love that.

Is that okay?

Yeah.

So you're going to cut it and you're going to -- I would pick a spot like right there.

Oh, not in the center?

Well, you can if you want to.

Oh, you're -- Oh!

But I should s-- At a minimum, I should chop these, right?

Okay, so let's just do some height research here.

You're going to be good because they're going to continue to get longer.

So yeah, just take off a little bit.

Ah, so the -- Oh, this is a whole revelation.

Because now you're going to get an asymmetry to your bouquet that makes it a little less predictable.

See, I would have just popped it right in the middle.

That's okay though.

That's okay.

Now, you're going to notice something.

What did I not do to these Freesia?

You did not chop the bottoms?

I did not, because Freesia is the only flower in the flower world that has the strongest vascular system of any flower.

And when you cut it, it will send a surge of ethylene up the stem that will kill the last blossom of the Freesia.

So if I don't cut that -- So don't cut Freesia stems.

Period.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

That's the only flower.

Don't do it with anything else.

Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ Now, I can show you something one more time.

Okay, show me something, J.

Okay.

I'm gonna pull this guy up here like this.

And I do this.

Oh!

Sometimes I will grab in here and I will grab a hold of pieces and parts... Yes.

...and pull those out... Another revelation.

...to give me a little bit more room.

Then... ...I lay that where I want it to go.

Oh, yes.

And then we go back in.

So we'll reveal what you've created.

Alright.

I think it's fantastic.

Bless your heart.

No, I think it's wonderful.

I'm pretty excited about it.

So, thank you for everything that you did to help us have this amazing flower market.

Thank you, J. And thanks for spreading the word about one of the most incredible things in San Francisco.

Yeah.

My pleasure.

Thanks so much.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ This flower market is filled to the brim with all kinds of flowers.

But did you ever wonder how did they all get here?

Or better yet, for ordering all the flowers that you see here for sale?

Enter my lifelong friend Barbara Schnur, who has worked for the market for many years.

Barbara is a flower buyer, and today she's here to tell us about her amazing job and the beautiful flowers she procures for events, flower designers and more.

You are a buyer here.

I am.

I buy everything here.

How do you determine what you're going to buy?

Well, a lot of it is pre-book.

We do have a really good system in place.

So pre-book means that the florist would call you and pre-book what they want you to find for them.

Exactly.

Every day I'm checking the system, looking at the pre-book, seeing what needs to be ordered.

Okay.

But that's just pre-booked.

I still have to, in my mind, think about for all of the walk-in customers that we have.

That you don't know what they want.

I have no idea.

So you're filling up the floor with flowers.

Right.

And you're looking for things that are beautiful.

And trying to find stuff that's different that somebody else on the market might not have.

Oh, okay.

Which is really challenging.

How do you know how many colors there are of one flower?

How do you know how many flowers there are in a different way?

How do you know about that stuff?

I never used to be into the whole Internet tech thing, and I don't know -- I don't know how we lived without it because there isn't anything I can't find on the Internet right now.

So if somebody asks for something that I've never seen, I start by going on grower websites and I see if it's something they have, if it's something that comes out of South America, Colombia.

I reach out to my Miami location.

"Hey, have you guys ever seen this Alstro?

Have you ever seen this pom-pom?"

But then there's other stuff that I find where growers just watch out for me.

They will just message me, text me and say, "Hey, I have all of this stuff that came in.

Do you want it before I put it on open inventory?"

And then I have the option to take it, so I feel really lucky.

So it's relationship, experience, knowledge.

It's all of those pieces and parts.

Yes.

So you also have a state of the art cooler system now, which is different from what you had before.

Flowers were meant to be refrigerated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we follow the cold chain.

My trucks come in.

They're refrigerated.

They're in water.

In the old place, they would sit out, and here they come in.

They go right into the cooler.

Are we looking at hundreds of thousands of stems or millions of stems?

Peonies alone, I got 50 boxes, and most of them are packed by 100 stems.

That's just peonies?

That's just peonies.

Alright.

And we pick up from growers.

So I got in probably 180 bunches of Larkspur.

So that's 1,800 stems.

Okay.

So a ton.

You're buying flowers from all over the world.

I buy from Ecuador, South America, Costa Rica, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, California, Oregon, Washington.

There's so much logistics and so much that the grower goes through to get stuff to us and so much that we have to do once, you know, I mean -- Their job is to grow it.

And I have to figure out how to get it to me.

Right.

This has been so amazing.

I mean, you and I have been friends forever, but just the fact of what you do now and on the scale that you do it -- I love it.

And I know that you do.

I mean, when we talk on the phone -- This is what I've always wanted to do.

I love coming to work and I love being around all this.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

I appreciate it so much.

Thank you.

♪♪ So today's featured flower is peonies because when I saw this, there's so many different colors and they probably come from all sorts of different places.

So can you tell us about these guys?

I can.

So, right now peony season is in full bloom.

And so we're getting everything from Oregon.

And right now they have probably about 25 varieties, from tree peonies to standard peonies to premium peonies.

And how long does peony season last?

We stretch it till around the end of June, early July, depending, but those are later varieties.

We won't have this selection.

Everybody just loves all the peonies because they perform and they're beautiful and they smell.

That's wonderful.

But remember, when they're done, they do not warn you.

Oh.

They're done.

Right.

And they're done.

They're done.

Perfect.

Thanks.

Featured flower, the peony.

♪♪ You can't help but be in the most fabulous flower market in the world and not make a beautiful arrangement.

We have French tulips, regular tulips, peonies, and yellow peonies.

And we're going to put them all together in a vase in a beautiful arrangement befitting the new San Francisco flower market.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ And now it's time for my favorite part of the show -- flowers from you, the viewers.

Today I have a few arrangements from Kay Gomolak from Alamogordo, New Mexico.

She watches the show on KRWG PBS.

Kay writes, "I love your show.

Most of the flowers, although not all, are from our garden.

The rest are from our market.

A garden is quite different here in New Mexico compared to where I grew up in Illinois."

What a great idea, Kay, to combine flowers from the market and flowers from the garden.

It's a perfect partnership.

Thank you so much for sharing all these gorgeous arrangements.

Please send me your pictures of flower arrangements inspired We call them "Schwankes" after a viewer's nickname.

Send them to [email protected].

That's the letter "J" at the letter "U" bloom.com, and watch for more Schwankes on upcoming shows.

Thanks for joining me to experience how flowers play a beautiful part of life in San Francisco.

If you have the opportunity to visit, you may just leave your heart here too.

For "Life in Bloom," I'm J Schwanke.

What do you think, Willie?

Am I doing okay?

Is there a future for me?

[ Speaking indistinctly ] Get out of politics, get into floral design?

They're all lining up for your résumé.

Can I take this home?

Absolutely.

Yes!

Absolutely.

And remembering the flowers.

Some of them come to me like that.

And other ones I sit there and stare at like I've never seen it in my entire life.

Hold on a minute.

And I'm like a Rolodex.

Yeah.

There's a lot of wealth of information in your gorgeous little head.

I love that.

I love that.

And some days my precious little head wants to explode!

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

J's flower-arranging tips, helpful hints, and arrangement recipes are available in J's two books, "Fun with Flowers" for $25 and "Bloom 365" for $20 plus shipping.

To purchase these books and any of our additional products, visit ubloom.com/store.

♪♪ To learn more about flower arranging and J, access to videos, and to get recipes, tips, techniques, and much more, visit us online at ubloom.com, follow J on Facebook and Instagram @jschwankeslifeinbloom.

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by the following... ♪♪ At home.

♪♪ At work.

♪♪ Or anytime.

♪♪ CalFlowers is a proud sponsor of where flowers and wellness go hand in hand.

We have fresh in all our stores, from soups and steaks and all things flour to all things flowering.

Custom fresh arrangements designed by our in-store florists at Albertsons Companies.

With additional support from the following... PassionRoses... ♪♪ Suntory Flowers.

♪♪ Closed-caption funding provided by fabulousflorals.com.

♪♪