New York City — It May Not Have Many Gardens, But It Has Flowers Everywhere

Like many New Yorkers, I have a local florist where I routinely buy flowers. There are more supposedly upscale — certainly more expensive — flower stores in my neighborhood, but this one is my favorite. The story behind it is a special one — the sort of story that makes me love NYC so much, as well as so many of the people who live here.

The owner, Solim, knows I love flowers. She never suggests that she make me an arrangement because she knows that I like to arrange the flowers myself. We share our love of flowers so she understands.

As so often happens in NYC, one day she told me a bit of her life story — how her love of flowers led to her ownership of a small store in Manhattan that has survived when others have not. I share it here because I think it offers all of us a special insight into the power of our life dreams as well as just how compelling something beautiful — like flowers — can be.

Solim knew that she loved flowers. So, without putting much more thought into it, she started her shop. She wasn’t trained in flowers or business. But given how much she adored flowers, why do anything else?

Soon after opening, though, she wasn’t sure that she would make it. The economics just wouldn’t work. So she asked a friend how anyone could ever keep a flower shop going — how did you make money when you buy all those flowers and then they die before they are bought?

That question was a turning point. Her friend explained that she had failed to consider one critically important aspect of a flower shop — the need for a refrigerator. This was why the flowers would die before she could sell them; with no refrigerator, the heat ensured her flowers would not make it very long.

Maybe that seems obvious, but Solim was a young woman launching a business she knew very little about. She bought a refrigerator of course and decades later her shop still exists on 1st Avenue, between 55th and 56th Street, supplying us mid-town east folks with the lovely flowers and plants for our homes.

Solim and I get along quite well and I think that is for reasons that surpass just our love of flowers. I am constantly telling my husband that where there is the will, there is always a way. I have not asked, but I assume Solim agrees. She loved flowers so she found a way. It turned out that way needed a refrigerator, but she eventually worked that out.

And now, when I lean in that refrigerator and pick a flower, she always tells me when I have chosen one that won’t live long and points me to another. I may have picked a beautiful flower but she makes sure I pick a flower that will last.

Solim’ s store, and the thousands of others like it, are NYC. We are a city of wills that have found ways. It isn’t always easy to live here; in fact, it would probably be easier to live almost anywhere else. But anywhere else would not be New York City. As the song says, if you can make there, you’ll make it anywhere.