The Flowers I Refuse to Work With — and the One I Changed My Mind About

Every florist has a list they don't talk about out loud, and mine has gotten me in trouble at least twice at the wholesaler on Florida Avenue.

I've been doing this long enough to have opinions that have calcified into rules. Some of them are aesthetic. Some are logistical. Some are purely personal and I can't fully defend them except to say that after years of working with flowers six days a week, you develop a relationship with certain stems that just doesn't work anymore — like an ex you're perfectly civil with but would never call for help moving.

So here it is. The list I usually keep to myself.

Baby's Breath — I Know, I Know

I will not use it. I've turned down clients over it. That sounds extreme and maybe it is, but baby's breath in a high-end arrangement reads to me the way a clip-art border reads on a wedding invitation. It's not that it's inherently ugly — in the right context, in the right hands, it can actually be beautiful. I've seen editorial work that used it well. But in a boutique luxury context in DC, where our clients are paying for something that feels considered and intentional, baby's breath signals the opposite. It signals filler. It signals an afterthought. I can't unsee that, and I'm not willing to try.

If someone wants that airy, cloudy texture, I'll use white lisianthus buds, or waxflower, or tweedia. There are better ways to get there.

Dyed Carnations

Not carnations themselves — I've come around on carnations, and I'll get to that — but the ones that arrive at the market already dyed teal or electric blue or that violent shade of orange that doesn't exist in nature. Someone had to make a choice to dye a flower a color it was never going to be, and then they had to look at the result and decide to sell it. I can't work backward from that into something I'm proud of. Pass.

Glittered Stems, Painted Roses, Anything with Spray Paint

This is a category, not a single flower, but it belongs on this list. I've been asked — more than once, around November when people start planning holiday events — whether we can do gold-sprayed magnolia branches or roses that have been painted with that metallic shimmer. My answer is no, and it's not going to change. If you want warmth and richness in a winter arrangement, I'll give you café au lait dahlias, antique amnesia roses, dried pampas, deep burgundy leucadendron. Gold that exists in nature. Not gold from a can.

Tulips in August

This one is logistical but it's also a philosophy. Tulips are a spring flower. They're available year-round now because the global supply chain makes everything available year-round, but tulips sourced in August have traveled farther, held longer, and have a fraction of the life of a tulip you buy in April when the Dutch harvest is fresh and the Georgetown farmers' market still smells like cold soil. I work seasonally wherever I can, and part of that means telling clients: you want tulips, let's talk about March. Trust me on this one.

The Flower I Changed My Mind About: Carnations

I spent years being a carnation snob. Full stop. The grocery store associations, the dyed green ones on St. Patrick's Day, the way they get used to pad out cheap arrangements with no real intention — I had written them off completely.

Then I walked into the market on a Tuesday morning in early fall and a grower I trust — she's been at that market longer than I've been alive — handed me a bunch of Chabaud carnations and told me to actually look at them.

I looked. And I felt a little embarrassed.

The ruffled, doubled petals on a properly grown Chabaud carnation look like something a Renaissance painter would have bothered to include in the background of a portrait — not as filler, but as the point.

The color depth on a deep burgundy or blush Chabaud is genuinely complex. The fragrance — and this is what kills me, because I'd forgotten about it — is spicy and sweet and old in the best way, like something from a garden that's been tended for a hundred years. I've been using them in autumn and winter work ever since, almost always in tight clusters where that ruffled texture can do something, and clients who don't know what they're looking at often assume they're some rare, expensive bloom I sourced from somewhere impressive.

They're carnations. I just had to get out of my own way long enough to see them clearly.

Why This List Matters (To Me, At Least)

I think about my refusals not as rigidity but as the result of paying close attention for a long time. Every flower I won't work with represents something I've thought through — a texture that undermines what I'm trying to build, a sourcing reality I can't get behind, an aesthetic shortcut that cheapens the finished work. And every time I change my mind about something, it's because someone or something made me look again.

That's the actual job. Not just knowing what you like, but staying curious enough to notice when you were wrong.

The carnations are in the cooler right now. Come see them if you're near Capitol Hill.