Despite crisis, blossoms
Amid pandemic struggles, flower shop’s owner finds fulfillment and meaning
They should be walking to the nearby Starbucks now because it is almost 5 p.m., and they’ve delivered dozens of bouquets across Albany, and the couple dozen arrangements, which line the lavender-colored walls of the small Madison Avenue store, have been wrapped, ribboned and bowed.
But instead, Marie Campbell, owner of Blooms By Marie, checks her iphone to see a new Facebook message: “Do you deliver?”
And another message, this one with a photo of the yellow and red rose bouquet they had just rushed to make: “These were amazing!”
So Campbell and her flower-arranging maestro, Phil Copeland, 81, decide to keep working a few more minutes because the success they’re lucky
enough to be witnessing with their small business is a “blessing,” they believe.
“You think today’s busier than yesterday, Phil?” Campbell asked.
“About the same,” Copeland said, recalling how they had stayed in the shop the previous day from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. to catch up with holiday orders.
In a year of crisis for many small businesses caused by the coronavirus pandemic’s economic fallout, Blooms By Marie is seeing unexpected success — especially for a business that began operating in April this year, during the initial stages of lockdowns. Campbell, a spiritual person, said she simply prayed about whether to start the venture. The answer: Do it.
It turned out virtual meetings made many people in the Capital Region want to fill that square backdrop with flowers, Campbell said.
“If you watch the news, everybody has flowers,” Campbell said. “But I also think when COVID hit, people gravitated to the comfort of flowers. They’re psychological. They’re emotional.”
As she moves around the flower shop, she is constantly messaging back her customers. “Thank you so much,” she texts the man who wanted to surprise his partner with roses. She moves to and from her car with frolic energy. She constantly tells Copeland how beautiful his work is and asks that he give the final stamp of approval on whatever arrangements she makes because, as she explains, “he is the true genius.”
Campbell has been working with flowers since she was a little girl.
At age 14, she moved to Albany from Jamaica, the country where she would look in wonder at the hibiscus growing around her home, planted by her father, Eric Moncrieffe, who taught her that plants “can heal people” and “bring joy.”
She became a nephrology nurse at 19 years old, worked for 29 years at Albany Medical Center, then transitioned to a job with a health insurance company that asked her to work behind a desk and perform what she described as boring tasks.
In April, as the coronavirus continued its deadly spread in the region, Campbell felt a deep dissatisfaction with her job, and her life. She was stuck inside. She was no longer directly helping or interacting with others.
What was bringing her purpose was her flowers, so she wondered if she could sell a few on the side. She began selling arrangements from her house in the spring, saw success, and quit her health insurance job. Then she sold flowers from the Guilderland farmers market over the summer. In the fall, she opened a small shop downtown, and in December, she and Copeland plan to move one door over from the shop’s current location at 811 Madison Ave. to a bigger space.
Copeland said he’s excited to have louder speakers for the
B.B. King and Aretha Franklin songs he plays while working.
“Flowers, music: What else do I need?” he said as he sliced thorns from thin rose stems.
His palms are smooth. He said he never pricks himself, not since his youthful days on the flower farm in Suffolk, Va., where his father taught him how to work the land, even though he was more interested in arranging the Virginia candytuft and gladiolus it produced. He worked as a flower arranger for 47 years in New York, put his kids through school, retired and, one day, walked inside Blooms By Marie, where he met Campbell, who was trying to put her four kids through college as a single parent.
Now he’s again arranging petals because it makes him feel “high,” working with his hands. Copeland and Campbell have a familial relationship. He says she’s “one of the most beautiful souls” he’s ever known, and she says, “He’s like my father.”
The work they do feels particularly meaningful this year.
“I bless all my flowers before I give them to people. I want God to give them a little extra comfort.” — Marie Campbell
Customers share with Campbell how her flowers help them cope. There was the woman who bought roses for a friend experiencing depression. The couple who just needed something bright while stuck at home. The son who lost a father to coronavirus and wanted a bouquet.
“I bless all my flowers before I give them to people,” she said. “I want God to give them a little extra comfort.”
Now it is dark out, and Campbell and Copeland put on their coats. Her fingers are silver from spray-painting roses. His phone is almost out of battery from playing music all day.
They are going to get their coffee. They will order a venti and split it between the two of them. But first, Copeland reaches in his pocket for a lighter.
They lock up the store and begin walking.
“God is good,” Copeland said, taking a puff of his cigarette. “Sure is good.”