Below is the script for this episode.
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Welcome back to Fareham Florist Pod — the place where floristry meets chaos, creativity, and occasionally sheer masochism. If you’ve spent even a day working with flowers, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Floristry is a gorgeous craft, a soulful expression of art and emotion… wrapped in thorn scratches, ribbon burns, soaked clothes, and the occasional feeling that you may, in fact, be losing your mind.
I’m your host, Sarah — owner of Fareham Florist, also known as Flowers by Moonstones, a small independent and family-run business perched on the outskirts of a small town on the south coast of the UK called… yes, Fareham. it’s a world filled with petals, personality, and plenty of unexpected plot twists.
Those of you who have listened to my first four episodes will notice I have made a few changes. I have received some really good feedback with ideas on how I could improve things. I have also received some very nasty messages too. As a result I have shaken things up a bit. Made changes which needed to be changed.
Today’s episode is something of a time capsule — a trip back to the era before “modern convenience” sneaked its way into floristry and made certain tasks, well… easier… but also removed a bit of the grit that made the old-school way feel weirdly heroic.
This episode was inspired by a moment earlier this week, when I had a lady in the shop helping out - bless her innocent soul — looked at me with despair in her eyes and said:
“I hate this. I can’t get the pins to go in properly.”
And I swear, the world blurred around me. Suddenly I wasn’t standing in my modern workshop with heaters and foam bases and perfectly packaged ribbon rolls. I was catapulted back to the beginning — to my own apprenticeship — to the days when moss came with live inhabitants, when bouquet armatures were weapons, and when pain tolerance was considered a professional skill.
And so today, I’m taking you with me.
Let’s go back to the days of ribboning, wiring, moss fights, near-fatal encounters with ants, and the kind of floristry that built character — usually by drawing blood.
Before I continue I would like to give a shout out to a couple of people. Firstly, a thank you to “anonymous” whose feedback has really helped me to - hopefully - improve the show as I move forwards.
I would also like to thank Sam, from What’s the Occasion, a lovely little card and gift shop located in Highlands Road, also in Fareham. Her support has been invaluable. It’s so nice to have a fellow female business owner who understands the daily challenges of running a small business within our area. Thank you Sam.
Now, on with the show.
So, what exactly is “ribboning”?
It sounds pretty, doesn’t it? Delicate. Graceful. The sort of thing you'd
imagine doing with soft lighting, a gentle playlist, and serene concentration.
No.
Ribboning is the deceptively complicated, finger-stabbing job of attaching pleated poly ribbon around the edges of funeral tributes using short metal pins that exist purely to test your patience and resilience.
My trainee approached the task with all the confidence of someone who believed this was like scrapbooking. She positioned her ribbon, picked up a pin, tried to push it into the foam, and immediately recoiled as if the foam had insulted her ancestors.
“Why won’t it go in?” she cried.
“Oh,” I said, entirely too calmly, “welcome to the beginning of your training.”
The ribboning method I taught her was the one I still use:
Ribbon onto a dry foam base. Always dry.
Why? Because if it’s soaked, your pins slide around like drunks on ice. But dry
foam gives you structure. Resistance. Predictability.
However… dry foam also crumbles. And crackles. And occasionally fights back. So there’s a trade-off.
I explained all this to her, but the only part she retained was, “I can’t do it.”
So I tried to encourage her by sharing a bit — a bit, mind you — of what floristry was like before we had foam as standard.
She blinked at me in confusion. “What do you mean, before foam?”
Oh, my sweet summer child.
Her disbelief grew wider with each sentence.
When I told her that bouquet holders didn't come with
built-in plastic cages?
Shock.
When I told her we wired hundreds of flowers by hand, often
for hours?
Horror.
When I mentioned moss bases?
She physically recoiled as though moss itself had appeared behind her.
But the ribboning continued, her struggle continued, and before long she was muttering, “I swear, the foam hates me. It’s personal.”
And I had to laugh. Because I remember thinking exactly that once upon a time.
Now, for anyone listening who joined floristry after the era of oasis foam becoming industry standard, brace yourselves.
Because the origins of funeral work — and wedding work — were not for the fainthearted.
Forget foam.
Forget plastic frames.
Forget ergonomic tools.
Back then, we used moss.
Actual moss.
From the ground.
Stuffed into wire frames that were so jagged they could have doubled as
medieval torture devices.
I remember being shown a heart-shaped wire frame during my
apprenticeship.
My first thought?
“Oh wow, how lovely.”
My second thought, about two seconds after touching it?
“Oh wow… I may need a tetanus shot.”
The moss itself wasn’t the soft, fluffy decorative moss people buy in tidy little bags at craft shops. Oh no. We used industrial, construction-grade moss. Moss that came in from suppliers in great, heavy, damp sacks that felt like you were hauling around small, disapproving woodland creatures.
My boss would plop this giant sack onto the floor and
announce,
“Right — you’re mossing today.”
Which meant stuffing the wire frame with moss so tightly that it held moisture, weight, and flowers. But moss does not want to be contained. It fights. It resists. It crumbles if you’re too gentle and bulges if you’re too rough.
And after stuffing the frame, the real challenge began:
The wiring.
Every single flower had to be individually wired and taped. Hundreds of them. One by one. And your hands — oh, your hands — ached in places you didn’t know muscles existed.
The wiring process shaped my early floristry life.
It was repetitive.
It was meticulous.
And it was absolutely brutal on your wrists.
You didn’t dare complain, either.
Not back then.
Because our boss had a philosophy:
“If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.”
He also had a friend — a mysterious “friend” — who apparently supplied wire frames at a discount. These cheaper frames had more jagged edges than actual structure. They were warped, twisted, uneven… and occasionally still had clumps of rust on them that made you question your career choices.
I remember going home after my first full mossing shift, rolling up my sleeves in the mirror, and realising I looked like I’d been dragged through a rose hedge backwards. My arms were a constellation of scratches.
But did I complain the next day?
Of course not.
Iodine was the answer.
A bottle of burning liquid that was, in our workshop, used more liberally than
actual water.
Pour it on, grit your teeth, and carry on.
My trainee nearly fainted when I mentioned iodine.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that most days, pouring iodine on your hands hurt more than
Now, let’s talk about the real joy of moss:
The living creatures that considered it their forever home.
Summer moss?
Alive.
Teeming.
A crawling ecosystem of things that should never, ever be near a florist.
Picture this:
You reach into a bag of moss.
It feels damp, earthy, slightly stringy.
You grab a handful.
And suddenly — movement.
Ants.
Thousands of them.
Eggs.
A writhing little mound of nature’s anxiety triggers.
Or maybe it’s not ants.
Maybe it’s earwigs.
Or woodlice.
Or spiders the size of your regret.
Spiders were my personal nemesis. They’d appear mid-mossing, dangling from threads like little creatures who thought they owned the place. And we didn’t have time to be delicate — we were under pressure, often working late into the night. So every new creepy-crawly appearance resulted in one of us shrieking, someone else swearing, and everyone scattering like pigeons at a fireworks display.
And winter wasn’t kinder.
Winter moss?
Frozen.
Like trying to shape snowballs made of concrete.
Your fingers would go numb.
Your nails would split.
Your breath would fog in the air as you tried to force frozen clumps into wire
frames that cut into your palms.
My trainee listened to all this in absolute silence, her eyes slowly widening.
When I reached the part about the time a spider crawled across my mossed base mid-funeral tributes and I nearly launched the entire arrangement across the workshop, she whispered:
“I would have quit immediately.”
Honestly?
Many did.
Floristry, back then, wasn’t something you just “tried” for
fun.
It was something you survived.
And because I survived it, those early days became part of who I am now — meticulous, stubborn, and weirdly nostalgic for the madness of moss.
Back to my trainee.
Her biggest complaint was pins.
Pins bending.
Pins snapping.
Pins refusing to enter the foam.
Pins appearing to have a sense of humour.
I explained — as gently as possible — that her foam base
wasn’t the enemy.
It was simply teaching her the ancient art of patience.
I showed her how to hold the ribbon taut.
How to angle the pin.
How to push down firmly, but not too firmly.
How to keep the pleats even.
She tried. And tried. And tried.
After the seventh attempt, she flopped onto a stool and said:
“This is impossible. How did you ever learn to do this?”
So I told her the truth:
By suffering.
By bleeding a bit.
By crying occasionally.
By repeating tasks until muscle memory formed.
By being yelled at, corrected, guided, and forgiven.
By learning the rhythm of the work.
Ribboning funeral tributes isn’t just about decorating an
edge.
It’s about structure.
The wires underneath carry the flowers.
The pleated ribbon holds tension.
The pins evenly placed help the arrangement stay upright and stable.
And through this ritual — thousands of pins later — you begin to understand floristry not as decoration, but as engineering.
My trainee blinked and said:
“I thought it was just making things pretty.”
Oh, my dear girl.
If only.
The truth is: floristry is beautiful.
But it’s also brutal.
It’s emotional labour.
Physical labour.
And occasionally psychological warfare with foam blocks that crumble at the
worst possible moment.
Those early moss-and-wire years shaped me.
They taught me grit.
Precision.
Patience.
Creativity under pressure.
And resilience that translated into every flower I touch to this day.
I wanted my trainee to understand that the frustrations she felt were not failures. They were rites of passage. Every florist before her — every skilled, seasoned florist — has bent pins, mis-pleated ribbon, wired the wrong flower, stabbed themselves with rose thorns, and panicked over collapsing moss.
Mistakes aren’t the enemy.
They’re the path.
And somewhere during the day, I saw her shoulders relax.
Her breathing steady.
Her hands become just a little more sure.
She wasn’t perfect yet — none of us ever are — but she began to realise that the history of floristry is carried in the hands of every person who picks up a ribbon or a pin.
Humour has always been our shield.
When you’ve had spiders fall onto your face during mossing…
When you’ve wired 200 carnations and taped your fingers together accidentally…
When you’ve bled onto a frame and begged the universe to stop testing you…
You learn to laugh.
Not disrespectfully —
but with the understanding that floristry isn’t meant to be pristine. It’s
messy, unpredictable, beautifully imperfect, and deeply human.
And that’s what I wanted my trainee to see:
That even in the chaos, there’s purpose.
And in the pain, there’s pride.
And in the madness, there’s community.
So that brings us to the end of today’s trip through floristry’s slightly unhinged history.
If you’ve ever wrestled with foam, moss, mud, ribbon, wire,
or a spider with a death wish — congratulations.
You’re one of us.
Floristry isn’t for the fainthearted.
It’s for the brave, the patient, the creative, and the wonderfully stubborn
souls who somehow find joy between thorns.
And as for the trainee?
She got there.
Slowly.
Messily.
All whilst muttering under her breath.
But she made it
And one day, she’ll pass her stories of chaos and survival on to someone new.
Thank you for joining me on this journey back in time.
You have been listening to Fareham Florist Pod — reminding you to keep
your ribbons pleated, your moss tight, your humour intact, and your sanity
optional.
Thank you so much for joining me as I've navigated my way through this very first podcast. I really hope you'll stick around and join me for the rest of the journey. If you have enjoyed this episode and I really hope that you have, please feel free to share, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcast. This can make a really huge difference and helps others to find us. I appreciate all feedback, good and bad, but if leave in negative feedback, please keep it constructive and be kind. I'm a florist after all.
You can also find us and share with everyone on the usual social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blue Sky and any others which may pop up in between. Just look for Fareham Florist Pod.. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have regarding any of the tales and or experiences that I've shared, or to do with just being a general working florist. You can reach me via email. The address is farehamfloristpod@duck.com
Are you a florist with your own stories, your own experiences that you would like me to share for you? If you are, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me via email. The address is farehamfloristpod@duck.com or drop me a WhatsApp on 073 671 87685. Let me know if you would like me to keep you anonymous. If you would like me to give your business a mention, whether you run a florist, butcher, baker, or even a candlestick maker, I'm more than happy to do so providing your business is registered and trading legally. As a thank you for putting your details out there and hopefully generating some new business for you, it would be appreciated if you would be kind enough to make a donation to one of our nominated charities. These can be found on the webpage www.Fareham Florist Pod.co.uk.
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