Nicole Roberts: The Language of Flowers
By Charles McGuigan 04.2020
Nicole Roberts owns a flower shop on Bellevue Avenue in Richmond’s Northside. She and her husband continue to provide people with flowers in these existential times. Clusters of natural beauty to remind us of the way things will be again.
Flowers are a marvel. Their scent can help you sleep and actually improve your memory. And their colors, vibrant or muted, can relieve stress and anxiety, regulate your emotions, even make you more productive.
Like words, each flower is charged with meaning. Red roses may be eros rampant, forget-me-nots mean remembrance, while bluebells express gratitude. And so on.
“Consider this piece of Victorian poetry.
There is a language, little known,
Lovers claim it as their own.
Its symbols smile upon the land,
Wrought by nature’s wondrous hand;
And in their silent beauty speak,
Of life and joy, to those who seek
For Love Divine and sunny hours
In the language of the flowers.”
Nicole Roberts is fluent in this language, and she possesses an artist’s eye for creating arrangements that can bring hope and love and all things good into your home, even in these times of the COVID-19 pandemic. A rare flower herself, personifying grace and elegance, Nicole’s shop is aptly named Nicola Flora.
Nicole considers the many benefits of fresh-cut flowers in the home or office, and how they can influence our emotional well-being.
“Starting with the smell,” she says. “Certain smells will take you back to a place and time. Music will do the same thing as well.” She mentions three particularly fragrant flowers. “Freesia, stock, and stargazer lilies.”
As well as stimulating the sense of smell, flowers also appeal to our sense of sight. “Whites or pastels can be calming,” says Nicole. “Yellow and orange and red are of course more vibrant. Different color roses have meanings. They say red is for love, pink is for elegance, and yellow is for friendship and happiness.”
Nicole, who grew up not far from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania (of Groundhog Day fame) is a certified art teacher. “I went to Penn State and I became a certified art teacher,” she says. “But I worked more at a psychiatric center and worked with a lot of teenagers there. I really enjoyed that a lot. It was probably my favorite job other than this one. I love what I do today.”
Well before she studied art, Nicole knew more than a little about the floral business. It began with calamity just after her sixteenth birthday.
“Right after my sixteenth birthday, on Valentine’s Day I was to deliver flowers for a family friend who owned a flower store,” Nicole remembers. “I borrowed my dad’s Jeep Cherokee, and up in Pennsylvania they hadn’t plowed the roads yet, and I totaled his car and flipped it and the ambulance came and all that jazz.”
Even after that accident, Nicole continued working for the florist where she honed her skills as a floral designer.
“I ended up helping them in the store so I was doing a lot of processing flowers, and she was a great family friend and she was motivating,” says Nicole. “She would say, ‘Make a funeral arrangement.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And she was like, ‘You know what you’re doing. Just make it up and then I’ll let you know if anything needs to be fixed.’ So I was making up things since I was young. I worked there from when I was sixteen until I was twenty-one or twenty-two.”
These days, amid the pandemic, Nicole and her husband, Brad, practice a strict regimen in both the making of floral arrangements and their delivery
“We have to or else I will hear it from my husband’s mom,” Nicole says. “She’s a nurse and she’s been telling us if we have to leave the house we need to wear gloves and a mask. We are disinfecting everything, and it’s just he and I working. He’s delivering, and I’m working in the store with my cat and my turtle. Brad’s wearing gloves, then sterilizing his gloves, cleaning the mask, leaving the arrangement on the porch. A kind of knock and run by. And then he skedaddles.”
Though some of her suppliers have closed up shop, others are still selling flowers to Nicole.
“A couple of my wholesalers are closed, but others are open for business,” she says. “They are limited on some things, but they’re trying to get everything in they can. And my customers have been very, very patient. They’ll say, 'Oh, you can’t get that color? That’s fine. Whatever you can get.’ They’re just happy to get something to be able to spread their love to others.”
One of Nicole’s business neighbors is also selling some of her arrangements. “We’re also selling bouquets down at Little Green House Grocery which is just down the way,” she says. “We check with them just about daily. So when people are picking up their groceries, they can pick up some flowers there as well. “
Anyone wishing to purchase Nicole’s floral arrangement can place an order online or simply call Nicole.
“You can call the store phone because that number is linked up to my cell phone, which is great so I can be anywhere and answer,” she says. “Because we live so close to the store, we just walk on over and do what we need to do and walk back.”
As with all small business owners, Nicole is thankful for any business that comes her way.
“I’m glad that people are still able to do something,” she says. “Thank you to anyone who orders flowers, thank you so much. I’m happy with anything. It’s something to get me out of bed and out of the house and get some fresh air and see the cat and the turtle, and hanging out with them.”
The cat and turtle who reside at Nicola Flora have been an integral part of the business for years. They’re much more than mascots.
“The cat is Sue, he’s a boy named Sue, and he’s been with us ever since 2011,” Nicole says. “He just walked in—he was beat up—and I took care of him and he’s now the mayor of Bellevue. And then my turtle is Chloe, who’s also a boy, and I’ve had him since he was a baby, and he’s just turned sixteen.”
If you’d like to order flowers from Nicola Flora visit their website or give Nicole a call.
You might even get a meow from Bellevue’s mayor, a boy named Sue.
