Kalispell flower shop designs modern garden arrangements

Samantha Nolan is well versed in her knowledge about plants having grown up working at her family’s nursery, but she’s begun working with flowers in a new way by opening a floral shop in downtown Kalispell.

Flower Child Florals offers a variety of floral services, including store fresh flower pickups, deliveries of arrangements, wedding flowers, holiday and anniversary arrangements and flowers for funeral services.

“I grew up with flowers,” she said. “That culture just doesn’t leave you. I guess I have kind of come back to my roots. I’m working with flowers again, but I get to be more artsy with it.”

Nolan began the floral shop last year by taking orders and working out of her garage. Her first weekend — Mother’s Day — she sold out and then quickly she booked 20 weddings for the summer. She moved into a retail space last fall at 37 Fifth Street East in The Devonshire building that houses numerous small businesses.

“The community has been great and so supportive of a new business in downtown Kalispell,” she said.

Nolan’s parents own Columbia Nursery and Landscape in Columbia Falls.

While she enjoyed working with plants, Nolan says she was never keen about working in the dirt. So she headed to cosmology school and went on to spend 15 years operating salons — The Lash Studio and 406 Hair. She was looking for a career change when she decided to open the floral shop.

“There’s similarities businesswise, but now I’m working with living products versus serving clients,” she said. “It just feels organic to me.”

When customers stop by to pick up an order or find an arrangement, they can also shop a selection of gift items like candles, soaps, jewelry and cards.

Nolan places focus on using seasonal and local flowers when available saying her style is modern and trendy garden. She uses flowers from the family business and Two Kay’s Flower Farm.

“The design comes from me,” she said. “It’s something I feel good about and people like my style. I pull in the summertime from two different businesses here so those are garden flowers.”

Certain flowers — such as dahlias — are used only in arrangements when they can be purchased locally because they don’t hold up well to being transported.

“Shipping is bad for flowers so I stick with what’s in season,” she said. “It’s like fruit, the best ones are what’s in season. The flower arrangements last longer for that reason and that’s one reason that people often don’t buy flowers because they don’t last long once they get them home. I want to make sure that people enjoy flowers because that’s the point of flowers.”

Flower Child Floral is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information call 406-407-8829 or visit flowerchildfloralmt.com.

Features Editor Heidi Desch may be reached at 758-4421 or hdesch@dailyinterlake.com.