Florist keeps longtime Washington business blooming

A lot can change in small-town Iowa over the course of a century. People come and go, stores open while others close. Buildings are constructed, others are torn down, amenities are added, replaced, and sometimes replaced again.

One Washington Business, Wolf Floral, has stuck around through it all. Established in 1913 as a greenhouse, with a shop opened in the square sometime in the ‘50s. For almost the last 40 of those many years, the store has employed one Laura Bombei, its current owner, who started working there soon after high school.

“We’re celebrating 110 years in September, and I think that’s a testament to the community,” Bombei said. “I decided to keep the name, Wolf Floral, when I bought it in 2000, because it had been here so long … I remember coming to this flower shop when I was a little girl, when the Wolfs actually owned it.”

Bombei attended Indian Hills Community College for a year to study horticulture. A night class is flower arrangement opened her eyes to that more specific line of work, and set her on a path to Denver, Colorado. There, she took a several-week class on the subject, returned to her hometown of Keota, and found the job at Wolf Floral nearby.

“I always thought I would like to own a flower shop one day, but then I started having a family and I didn’t really know if that would be best-suited to me,” she said. “But I had the opportunity and I took it, and it’s worked out well.”

She said the work served as a creative outlet, and was inspired by her mother, who grew her own bloom-filled outdoor garden.

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“I love flowers and discovering all the new varieties over the years,” she said. “When I first started, it was pretty basic. There was not too much more than carnations, mums, gladiolus, pretty basic flowers. But then over the years, the flower industry has become really diverse.”

New types of flowers have risen to popularity over the decades. Bombei said Alstroemeria and various shades of roses have gone from eccentric, new-age trade show items to a commonplace option for customers.

Modern technology and globalized supply networks helped fuel those changes.

Wolf Floral gets a truck twice a week from Wisconsin and Illinois, bringing in shipments from Florida and California, most of them grown and picked in the more ideal conditions of Ecuador.

The plants spend around 48 hours from the moment they’re cut to the time they show up on Bombei’s business doorstep.

In any case, Bombei said the industry continued to surprise her, every once in a while.

She’s made an all-vegetable casket spray, and made another arrangement on top of a saddle.

“It is a challenge to create what some people see in their mind’s eye, I like a creative challenge,” she said. “I’ve done an all-vegetable casket spray, (with) cauliflower and broccoli. I did an arrangement on top of a saddle one time, I thought that was interesting.”

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One thing hasn’t changed with time: the amount of work.

A florist’s day is spent on their feet, hauling buckets full of water around the shop, and sweeping up stems and petals more often than one might expect. It takes a creative eye and an artistic knack that’s hard to learn. Holidays — especially Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day — are the highest-demand time of year, and involve long hours to match.

“As a working mom, it’s a juggling act sometimes,” Bombei said. “I kind of am secretly looking forward to, when I don’t have the store, enjoying the Christmas season, enjoy the holiday of Mother’s Day.”

Now a grandmother, Bombei said she was starting to look at retirement in the next few years. At that point, she plans to sell the shop, ideally to someone who will keep it running for another generation.

“I’ve seen where people go in and they buy it because they think it will be fun, and it doesn’t work out in the long run,” she said. “It’s a lot of knowledge you have to have.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com