Christina Stembel provides cost-effective, eco-friendly floral arrangements in the San Francisco Bay Area through Farmgirl Flowers. Before launching her company, Stembel planned events as the director of catering and the director of alumni relations at Stanford University. “During the economic downturn, Stanford was looking for ways to budget our fund-raising events, and I realized we were spending an exorbitant amount on flowers,” Stembel says. “So I started purchasing direct from local growers and doing some of the arrangements myself.”
This led Stembel to start researching why flowers cost so much, and she was startled by her findings: In addition to the fact that more than 70 percent of flowers are imported, the large variety of choices offered by local flower shops and big commerce companies translates to a lot of waste, since the unused flowers have to be subsidized. “I wanted to figure out a model that would solve all these problems at once,” she says. Farmgirl Flowers offers just one bouquet style of locally grown, seasonal flowers a day, wrapped in recycled burlap or arranged in American-made vases, and delivered by bike messenger or scooter.
The company also handles more than 175 events a year for brands such as Genentech, Google, ModCloth, and Facebook—planners simply request a color palette. With her designs, Stembel aims for a wild, eclectic aesthetic with lots of texture and greenery. “I always try to use something unique like rosemary, persimmons, hot peppers, or kale,” she says. In 2014, Farmgirl Flowers plans to roll out nationwide delivery, working with eco-friendly packagers and domestic growers.
