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Episode:
45
Sustainable Floristry: What's Green, What's Not, and How to Do Better with Melanie Stapleton
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It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, but before we all rush out and buy flowers for the special people in our lives, it’s worth thinking about the environmental impact of the flowers we buy.
I’m not saying don’t go and buy them, but it’s worth being educated about the industry so we can make informed decisions.
I personally love wildflowers and would just have us all buy those, but it’s not always an option.
Joining me today is Melanie Stapleton, founder of Cecilia Fox, a floral design studio. She’s not your typical florist, but her designs are absolutely beautiful.
She is constantly educating herself about sustainable practices in the industry, so I’ve asked her to join me so we can have all the information before we rush out and buy flowers this year.
Follow Melanie on Instagram, on her website and listen to her podcast.
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Transcript
Kia ora, kaitiaki, and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host, Brianne West, an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about taking a scientific approach to making the world a better place—without the judgement—and making it fun. And, of course, we’ll be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet with.
So, if you're looking to navigate everything green (or not so green), you've come to the right place.
Kia ora, kaitiaki, and welcome back.
Now, you already know—because I never shut up about it—how obsessed I am with wildflowers. And with Valentine’s Day coming up, today we’re talking all things flowers—but sustainable ones, obviously.
I’m very delighted to have Melanie Stapleton here with me. She’s the founder of Cecilia Fox, a floral design studio based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Now, she’s not a typical florist as you’d imagine, but her designs are absolutely stunning. So, I highly recommend you check out her Instagram—links will be, of course, in the show notes.
You may already know that flowers aren’t as green as you might imagine, but you may be surprised at just how much of a drain on the planet your Valentine’s bouquet actually is.
So, let’s get into it.
Brianne: Welcome, Melanie! Thank you so much for joining me.
Melanie: Hi! Thanks so much for having me—excited to be here.
Brianne: Delighted! It’s an unusual topic. When I said I was going to talk about sustainable flowers, a lot of people were like, but aren’t they all? Because they’re natural, growing in the ground—that’s just the assumption we have, right?
Melanie: Yeah, absolutely.
Brianne: So, we’ll dig into it—if you’ll pardon the terrible pun.
Melanie: Love a pun!
Brianne: First question is always the hardest. Tell me about you—where you started, how long you’ve loved flowers (if you do love flowers), and how you got into this.
Melanie: I was 16. I didn’t really like school, and my mum said to me, go and get a holiday job at the local florist in Milford, on the North Shore.
I was incredibly shy. She stood outside the shop so I wouldn’t run away, which was entirely possible at that point. So, I had to go in and ask them for a job.
Brianne: That’s a terrifying thing to do when you’re 16.
Melanie: Yeah—I wouldn’t do it now! I was so nervous about getting the bus because I’d have to give the driver 60 cents. So, Mum stood outside while I went in and asked for a job.
They said, We have a junior florist position. So, I went back out to Mum, and she said, Go back in and say you’ll take it, then just see what happens.
Over the school holidays, I worked there and ended up really loving it. I never went back to school.
Like all junior florists in the early ‘90s, I made instant coffee for the senior florists, swept the floor, cleaned buckets, and processed flowers. Processing is what we call treating the flowers after they come back from the market or grower. It was a tedious job, but I learned a lot.
I went on to work at different florists around Auckland, then moved to London. That was a huge shock for a small-time florist.
Brianne: I can imagine!
Melanie: London was pivotal for me. I met some incredible people and worked on some amazing jobs—though I was pretty much at the bottom of the rung.
Then, I moved to Melbourne and started working at Flowers Vasette.
Brianne: Oh, I’ve been to Melbourne, but I don’t know it.
Melanie: It’s iconic—pretty much every florist has to work there. It’s a rite of passage florist. They’re an amazing business, and Cherie, the owner, is incredible.
So, I worked there, met loads of people, and figured out what was going on in Australia. Everything felt bigger is better, but I really wanted to hone in on my style and say, this is what I do—if you don’t like it, that’s fine, there are plenty of florists down the road.
Brianne: Yeah—if you’re like every other business, why would they choose you?
Melanie: Exactly.
So, I started doing my own work and spent the next 15 years building Cecilia Fox into a really amazing business.
Brianne: Quick question—why the name?
Melanie: Ah, everyone asks that!
Cecilia is my middle name. It’s also my grandmother’s name—my dad’s mum. Fox is my mum’s maiden name. So, it’s an ode to both of my grandmothers.
I actually started with a blog—back when people wrote blogs before Instagram.
Brianne: Apparently, we’re going back to blogs now.
Melanie: I can’t keep up with all the things!
Before Instagram, I wrote this blog, and somehow it got traction. I called it Cecilia Fox because I didn’t want it under my own name—I was sharing all these inside secrets of floristry.
Brianne: Quick note—I always find this interesting. Women often say things like, for some reason, it gained traction, as if it just magically happened. But you clearly created something people loved, and that’s why it grew!
Melanie: Oh, that’s a really good point—thank you! I appreciate that.
Brianne: We all do it.
Melanie: Yeah, we really do. But yeah, I think people resonated with it because I wrote about when things went wrong.
Melanie: So, after the blog took off, I started doing lots of weddings and big events. I even opened a little shop for a while, which was fantastic. I really love the magic of retail. Sadly, I think that magic has faded a bit. But flower shops—they’re just magical. Walking into a little shop in the city, surrounded by flowers—it’s an absolutely magical experience. It’d be really sad if those disappeared.
Anyway, having the shop gave us an amazing window into how we like to work. It also gave us a platform to do weird and wonderful things. The shop was fantastic, but at the same time, I was running weddings and events out of this huge warehouse.
It was 500 square metres, and the business exploded into every corner of it. It felt like I’d been holding it all in for so long, and then suddenly it just burst out. When I look back at the photos of the work we were doing in 2017, 2018, 2019—I actually can’t believe I’m still standing.
So, that was a really pivotal part of Cecilia Fox.
Melanie: Then COVID hit, and our business was severely impacted, as you’d imagine.
Brianne: Of course—Melbourne had massive lockdowns.
Melanie: Yeah, really huge lockdowns. And because we mostly did large-scale events, pivoting felt almost impossible.
At the same time, I was at the beginning of some pretty severe burnout. During COVID, my partner’s mother passed away. We got special passes to fly up to Queensland for the funeral.
Brianne: At least you could be there—as horrible as that is.
Melanie: Yeah, exactly. So we went to Queensland with the family, thinking we’d stay for a little while. But then Melbourne went into another big lockdown.
We were like, should we just stay in Queensland? There was no COVID there. So we had our van and a tent, and we just drove—four and a half months, heading north. We camped, we drove—it was phenomenal.
It gave us a chance to reassess the business and our lives.
We’d never really considered moving to New Zealand. I grew up here—my whole family is in Aotearoa—but we never really thought about it. We had a home in Melbourne, our friends, the business (which was all-encompassing), and my partner worked in it too, alongside caring for our two young kids.
But we decided to move to New Zealand. During a global pandemic.
Brianne: How did you get in?
Melanie: It was quite hard. All of it was incredibly challenging. And honestly, if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t—I’d wait.
We closed the business in Melbourne and reopened in Auckland, thinking it would be a simple transfer. But when we arrived in Tāmaki Makaurau, we went straight into that extreme 2021 lockdown—four months, wasn’t it?
Brianne: Yeah, about that.
Melanie: It really put a dampener on launching into the New Zealand market.
Most of my clients in Auckland now tend to be Australians coming here to get married, or Australian stylists, that sort of thing.
But being here has given me the opportunity to really dive into sustainability within the business—to educate myself, but also to be an advocate for others. I don’t know if I’ve quite got there yet, but as you know, it’s a minefield. You think you’re doing the right thing—and then realise maybe you’re not.
Brianne: Yeah, sustainability is never black and white.
Brianne: Are you now focusing solely on events and weddings?
Melanie: Yeah, we don’t do retail anymore. I mostly focus on events and weddings. I really love corporate events because they can be quite weird—and that’s always interesting to me.
Brianne: Weird? How so?
Melanie: Well, corporates often want things like, it must be in the company colours.
Brianne: Oh, like navy blue flowers?
Melanie: Yep.
Brianne: What’s a navy blue flower?
Melanie: There isn’t one! You end up using purple, or really deep blue-toned flowers. You just have to be creative with it.
Brianne: I kind of love that challenge though—taking something odd and making it work.
Melanie: Exactly.
I do have a bit of an inkling to open another shop one day.
Brianne: I think you should! It sounds like you’re very good at it.
Melanie: I did an artist residency at the Strand Arcade in Auckland. I ran a few workshops and made some weird, wonderful things in a little shop there. The Strand Arcade is incredibly beautiful, though it’s been a bit neglected over the past 20 years.
They host these artist activations in some of the spaces. It’s right on Queen Street.
Brianne: Oh! The little walkway—yes, I know it.
Melanie: Yes! I did a pop-up shop there and some events, and it was really lovely. The central city community is fantastic.
What was really special was seeing how amazed people were by the flowers. I think when people aren’t exposed to creative floristry, they just don’t realise how magical it can be. Maybe they’ve only seen supermarket bouquets, or very basic arrangements.
But when they see something a bit different, it sparks something in them. That’s what I hope to do with all my work—create a spark.
Maybe someone sits down at a wedding and thinks, I’ve never seen that before, or my mum used to have that in her garden. That’s what I’m going for.
And maybe that spark makes them care more about the environment. You never know.
Brianne: You really don’t. But something beautiful can absolutely ignite that spark.
Melanie: Exactly.
So, no retail at the moment, but I’m also writing a book, which is really exciting.
Brianne: Ooh! About flowers?
Melanie: Yes—about flowers and sustainability. I’ve got a contract with Hardy Grant, a Melbourne-based publisher.
Brianne: Brilliant! When’s it coming out?
Melanie: Mother’s Day 2026.
So I’ve mostly been doing weddings and events, and working on the book. Plus, delving deeper into sustainability in the industry.
Brianne: Perhaps you should go back to blogging.
Melanie: Maybe I should! I also think there’s potential for a nice collaboration between Incrediballs and Cecilia Fox.
Brianne: Yes! When we did an event in the UK, we had these big, human-sized bars made out of flowers. They were beautiful, but obviously, I couldn’t bring them back to New Zealand. I’d love to create a giant ball or something like that. Our brand colours are easier—orange and pink, which are simple in the flower world.
Melanie: That’s easy! We could definitely do something fun. Maybe an event at the Strand Arcade or something like that.
Brianne: Sounds fun—let’s do it!
Brianne: You talk about sustainability in two ways: the flowers themselves—how you source and present them—but is there anything in how you run the business that’s particularly sustainable?
Melanie: Waste is a huge issue in the floristry industry.
Plastic waste, in particular—soft plastics.
Brianne: Like the wraps?
Melanie: Yes. Most bunches of flowers from the flower market or large-scale commercial growers come wrapped in single-use plastic.
Florists usually remove that plastic and rewrap the flowers in something else—sometimes more plastic, sometimes paper. Packaging is a massive part of the industry.
Then there’s the stuff we use to keep flowers alive. You’d think it’s just water, but actually, a lot of florists use floral foam.
Brianne: That green squishy stuff? Is that Oasis? It feels kind of fun to crush.
Melanie: Yes, exactly. Oasis is the brand name, but the product itself is called floral foam. Smithers-Oasis is the main manufacturer, though there are others.
Brianne: I’ve seen people crushing it online with glitter and stuff—like weird ASMR videos. I had no idea that’s what it was.
Melanie: Yep, that’s floral foam. It’s essentially a block of microplastics.
The problem is that florists soak it in water, then the excess goes down the sink—straight into the ocean. There’s research showing tiny ocean creatures ingesting it.
Brianne: Ugh. We’ve got an episode coming up about microplastics—that’s horrifying.
Melanie: And florists breathe it in when they work with it, too. It’s a heinous product.
The thing is, it’s incredibly useful—easy to work with, holds water well. But getting rid of floral foam is a fantastic step toward sustainability.
Brianne: I haven’t seen it in bouquets recently. Is its use decreasing?
Melanie: I hope so. There’s more awareness now.
The problem is, the company that makes it launched an “eco” version, which is just as bad—maybe worse. It breaks down faster, sure—but into microplastics.
Brianne: That’s classic greenwashing.
Melanie: Exactly.
I used to think I was doing the right thing by reusing foam, but now I realise I was just breaking it down into microplastics faster.
Brianne: Sometimes we think we’re making better choices, only to realise later we weren’t. It’s all part of learning.
Melanie: Absolutely.
Now, we use water vessels—like jugs, vases, even jars.
Brianne: Jam jars would be adorable.
Melanie: They are! But most businesses prefer something more polished.
People often assume sustainability means hessian, chicken wire, and craft paper. But it doesn’t have to look rustic or rough—it can be elegant and beautiful.
Brianne: It’s good to hear that the industry is shifting, even if slowly.
Brianne: Beyond packaging and foam, what about imported flowers?
Melanie: Imported flowers are complicated.
In New Zealand, about 20% of flowers are imported, which is relatively low compared to places like the UK (where it’s 80–90%) or the US.
Most imported flowers come from large-scale farms in Colombia, Ecuador, or parts of Africa. There are many issues to consider—carbon footprint, chemical use, water consumption, labour practices.
Brianne: I’ve heard concerns about labour conditions on some of these farms.
Melanie: Yes. Some farms have certifications, like Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance, but it’s still a developing system.
When you order flowers through a wholesaler, they might have a label, but most people don’t check—or even know to check.
In the UK, customers are starting to demand transparency. In New Zealand, we’re not quite there yet.
Brianne: It’s funny because I think about supply chains for food, clothes, electronics—but flowers? It didn’t cross my mind until recently.
Melanie: You’re not alone.
Brianne: Are there specific flowers we should avoid if we want to be more sustainable?
Melanie: Roses are tricky.
We import a lot of roses because local growers can’t meet demand—especially around Valentine’s Day. A rose bush produces flowers every six weeks, all year round.
Local growers can’t just ramp up production for one day, so we rely on imports.
Brianne: I assumed importing flowers was always bad, but I guess it’s more nuanced.
Melanie: Exactly. In some countries, roses grow naturally without artificial heating or lighting, which can actually make them less energy-intensive than locally grown flowers in glasshouses.
Brianne: Interesting. What about treatments for imported flowers?
Melanie: Imported flowers are treated with chemicals like glyphosate to prevent pests. New Zealand’s biosecurity is strict, and for good reason.
What’s frustrating is that it’s harder to import seeds for local growers than it is to import cut flowers.
Brianne: That’s surprising—I’d have thought seeds would be more tightly controlled, but I didn’t realise how restrictive it is.
Brianne: If you had to pinpoint the biggest environmental impact in floristry, what would it be?
Melanie: It’s a tie between plastic waste and sourcing.
But there’s also production waste—the leaves, stems, and plant material left over after processing flowers.
In busy shops, you might be knee-deep in green waste by the end of the day. If that waste goes to landfill, it’s a huge environmental problem.
Brianne: Because green waste in landfill releases methane, right?
Melanie: Exactly. Composting is essential.
When we break down large events, we try to donate flowers when possible, but often they’ve been under hot lights or in marquees for days—they’re beyond saving.
In the UK, there’s a not-for-profit that collects leftover flowers, dries them, and turns them into confetti.
Brianne: That’s such a cool idea.
Melanie: Yeah, and in New York, there are companies that specialise in breaking down floral installations sustainably.
In New Zealand, things are on a smaller scale, so florists do most of the work themselves.
Brianne: If a florist wanted to be more sustainable, where should they start?
Melanie: Composting.
Separating green waste from other rubbish is the easiest first step. It might feel tedious at first, but it becomes second nature.
Also, reduce plastic use, eliminate floral foam, and understand your supply chain. Know where your flowers come from.
Brianne: Great advice.
Brianne: You’ve listened to the podcast, so you know what’s coming. If you were supreme world overlord and could do one thing to make the world a better place, what would it be?
Melanie: I’d get rid of plastic—especially virgin plastic.
Brianne: Solid choice.
Melanie: And, I’d make sure that every person in the world received flowers at least once in their life. Just to experience that little spark of joy.
Brianne: That’s not weird at all—I love that. We could all use a little more beauty and magic in our lives.
Brianne: Thanks so much for joining me, Melanie. I really appreciate your time and insights.
And to everyone listening—I hope you’ve learned something new today. Remember, sustainability isn’t about being perfect. It’s about doing your best, learning, and making better choices as you go.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t keep it to yourself—leave a rating, subscribe, and share it with someone who’d love it too.
Kia ora, and I’ll see you next week.
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