Local Florist’s Passion For Beauty Spans a Lifetime
Theresa Green has spent most of her life making the world a more beautiful place. The owner of The BouqYard, a full-service wedding florist, has been working in the industry since she was 18 years old.
Theresa remembers spending time in her grandmother’s garden as a young girl, cutting flowers and making bouquets and arrangements for the kitchen table.
“I’ve always had a love for flowers,” she says.
Branching Out
Growing up in the small town of Flintville, Tennessee, Theresa always knew she would move somewhere else when she was old enough. When she turned 18, she moved to Huntsville and began calling around looking for work. She got a job at Creative Flowers, answering the phone and taking orders. Eventually, the floral designers let her play around with arrangements and gave her the opportunity to spread her creative wings.
“They gave me so much freedom to develop my own style, and I guess they realized, ‘Hey, she’s not that bad,’” Theresa reminisces with a laugh.
Over time, she began learning how to manage the shop and helped with the ordering of flowers. After 4 years, Theresa moved on to another shop, Gordon’s, where she met her husband, Mitch.
Mitch was “her plant guy,” she says. He delivered plants to shops for Joy’s Jungle, his family’s wholesale plant business. “I was young and didn’t have time for guys,” she says. But, Mitch and Theresa soon began dating and after they married, they purchased Gordon’s.
“After several years of operating Gordon’s we decided we wanted to devote more time to raising a family,” Theresa says. The Greens were working 7 days a week, managing the shop and keeping up with orders and events. They knew maintaining that lifestyle would be difficult with a growing family.
Theresa began taking on weddings and her success grew by word of mouth. “Mothers would call me wanting me to do their daughter’s weddings and things kind of snowballed from there,” she says.
The BouqYard has been in business for over 30 years, serving couples and making their wedding days memorable and beautiful events. Theresa describes her style as a garden style and she is all about “bringing the outside in.” She incorporates varieties of plants not traditionally used in floral arrangements.
“People will often tell me they have never seen some of the things I use before and that’s because it’s usually growing wild,” she says.
Theresa loves to use flowers from local growers whenever possible and also grows a lot of her flowers herself.
She and Mitch moved The BouqYard into the building in Grant that was Joy’s Jungle. Mitch’s parents, Ken and Joy Green, loved to grow vegetables and sunflowers. “Ken would notice flowers I liked to use in my designs and he would plant it so I could use it,” Theresa says.
Since Ken and Joy have both passed away, Mitch and Theresa have carried on working the land, planting a variety of flowers to use in floral designs like hydrangeas, Jackson vine and lepidium.
Theresa says her favorite flower is any type of hydrangea, which she grows a lot of. “I love fresh flowers and always loved having them in the house,” she says. She says the most popular wedding flowers are hydrangeas for spring and summer and dahlias in the fall.
“I am the kind of person who sees something growing on the side of the road, stops and cuts some, tests it in arrangements and if it works, I tell my husband to find it so we can grow it on the farm in Grant,” she says.
Keeping an Eye on the Bottom Line
“Typical florist flowers” like carnations, daisies and mums are losing popularity with modern brides, Theresa says. Of course, premium flowers can cost much more than people realize, so The BouqYard began offering BouqYard DIRECT for more budget-conscious clients.
“We understand everyone has a budget, so this is like getting the Vera Wang gown at a much cheaper price,” Theresa says. Through BouqYard DIRECT, brides receive premium flowers like hydrangeas, ranunculus and peonies at a lower cost because Theresa and her team design all of the floral elements ahead of time and deliver them on the day of the event.
“Because I don’t have to be present, or have staff there, it’s taking off and brides are loving it because they still get that ‘wow factor,’ but it’s still affordable,” she says.
The best part about Theresa’s job, she says, is the feeling she gets when she presents the bride with her bouquet for the first time. “She hugs me and says I took her vision and made exactly what she wanted and that feels wonderful,” she says. The day after a wedding, Theresa will usually receive a text or email from the bride, thanking her for being part of their day.
“How can you not feel good about that? I love what I do, I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t playing with flowers,” she says.
