Village Garden Florist and Gifts in New Concord shut down for nearly five weeks during the pandemic. The store recently reopened for delivery and curbside pick up services Submitted photo Hide caption By KRISTI R. GARABRANDT / The Daily Jeffersonian

The COVID-19 pandemic and closure of non-essential businesses has been especially difficult for florists who tend to do the majority of their business during this time of year.

Many local florists have lost out on the revenue they generally bring in from proms, graduations, weddings and funerals.

For some local florists who recently reopened, business is starting to blossom again with an increase in sales due to customers looking for alternative ways to celebrate moms on Mother’s Day.

Village Garden Florist in New Concord recently reopened after being closed for nearly five weeks.

During that time, they lost a wedding and did no funeral work.

Darla Galbreath, owner of the flower shop, estimates the business lost approximately $8,000 during the shutdown.

“We had to get our doors open for Mother’s Day,” Galbreath said. “We couldn’t lose Mother’s Day. We lost graduation. We lost prom. We do a lot of the college work, so we lost all the college work for summer, and we lost two graduations for the schools. We lost a lot of business.”

Galbreath said that they are lucky to own the building the business is in. She said they would have been in financial trouble if they would of had to pay rent. They still had to pay utilities and insurance, however.

Shelley Rockwell, owner of The Flower Gardens in Barnesville, estimates that their six-week shutdown has resulted in them losing 90% of their revenue compared to this time last year.

“We missed things like Easter, a wedding, a number of funerals, dance recitals, proms for three to four different school districts, and graduations, day-to-day school deliveries, and day-to-day hospital and nursing home deliveries,” Rockwell said. “So pretty much everything. We were able to do a little bit of funeral work on a very limited basis.”

One of the main problems for her shop is that, according to Rockwell, many of her flower distributors were also closed so they wouldn’t have been able to get any flowers for the shop during that time.

Rockwell said she spent most of time while her shop was closed was spent doing renovations, painting and general maintenance while closed. She expects her business to rebound after the shutdown.The Flower Gardens reopened with no contact delivery and curbside pick up for Mother’s Day.Rockwell said she was grateful to be able to do that and it was a help to the business.The business, which typically sells a lot of hanging baskets and potted annuals for Mother’s Day, also sold a lot of fresh flowers this year.“I’m hoping that is going to continue in the weeks ahead,” Rockwell said. “It’s a really wonderful way for the people to reach out to one another and they can still do it with no contact, and do something nice for somebody when you can’t get out to […]