This weekend, Tynong’s Lorraine Grant will celebrate her 70th year bringing colour to the people of Pakenham and beyond at the Pakenham Florist. Gazette journalist ELEANOR WILSON caught up with the spritely 85-year-old to find out what has kept her in the business of botanics.
If you go down to the Pakenham florist at 90 Main Street, there’s a good chance you’ll be met with a “small but feisty” 85-year-old.
Working alongside daughter and shop owner Allie Grant, Lorraine Grant has well and truly earned her stripes in the florist world.
This year marks her 70th Mother’s Day as a florist – her platinum jubilee as she refers to it.
“Last year I said to Allie ‘this is my 69th Mother’s Day’ and she said to me ‘do you think you could squeeze out one more next year so you can get 70 years of service like the Queen?” she said.
“It’s not quite the same service, but a service nevertheless.”
As a young girl, Lorraine initially had dreams of becoming a concert pianist, but there were some clues her future would be looking rosy.
“My mother used to say, when we lived in Meeniyan where I was born, she’d say ‘I couldn’t take you up the street because you’d be picking all the people’s flowers through their fences and making little bouquets for people’,” she reminisced.
“I used to pick the bracken ferns and all the dead grasses and make dry arrangements, way before all this silk and artificial stuff came around.“
It was 1953 when a 15-year-old Lorraine left school and started at a florist in Glenferrie Road, Malvern.
That, she says, is where she learnt to hone her craft, alongside shop owner Lila Menzies – sister-in-law to former Australia Prime Minister Robert Menzies.
“Sir Robert lived just up the road , they used to come into the shop and he would stand out the front, he didn’t come in usually.”
From there, she spread her wings to a florist in Carlisle Street Balaclava, where she worked for 17 years, before purchasing a shop in Glen Waverley.
That was a “fantastically busy shop” and also where Lorraine’s daughter Allie began her own career as a florist, helping out after school making posy arrangements.
Despite vowing to “never purchase another florist shop again”, due to the long hours and commitment associated with the career, when Allie purchased the Pakenham Florist 20 years ago, it was a lay-down misere that Lorraine would continue helping out at the shop.
A Mother’s Day 70 years ago could not be further from the modern day celebration, where large bouquets are artfully arranged with a bright variety of multi-seasonal blooms.
“When I first started Mother’s Day, we waited for the first white chrysanthemum to hopefully bloom in time for Mother’s Day and that was it…Mother’s Day was a single chrysanthemum,” Lorraine said.
“See, nowadays chrysanthemums don’t hold the same thrill, because we’re not waiting for the first one to flower – we’ve got them, with glasshouses now, all year.”
Valentine’s Day in the 1960s and 70s was the same – a single rose.
“But it was nice and pleasant – just one flower.”
When floral foam – a light-weight, water-absorbent material that creates a foundation for floral designs – entered the market in Australia in the late ‘70s, it revolutionised the industry .
Before then, Lorraine says, wet moss was the go-to.
“We had to get bag loads of wet moss, sometimes with leeches on it and we used to save our canned tomato tins, clean them, stuff them with moss and wire every flower that went into it,” she said.
Even the most seemingly customary utensils like sticky tape and staplers – bread and butter for florists – were hard to come by.
“No one realises how much change we’ve seen,” Lorraine said.
“Things like staplers and sticky tapes, we didn’t have staplers, we used cellophane sheets and we’d pin them with ordinary pins.
“I can remember when the first sticky tape came in. It was back a long time, things have changed.”
While Mother’s Day should be a chance for all mums to have a well-deserved day off, Lorraine, Allie and long time employee Jo Barnes are hard at work.
During Valentine’s Day this year, the trio estimate they got “about three hours sleep in three days”.
But the mum and daughter duo say they have never celebrated a conventional Mother’s Day.
“Even if I was working for other people, I always worked Mother’s Day…we don’t celebrate it,” Lorraine said.
“We’ve spent every Mother’s Day together, but we’ve never had a Mother’s Day outing,” added Allie.
While Lorraine claims to have slowed down in recent years, Allie maintains that her mum “even puts the young ones to shame”.
“Her work ethic is insane. She never gives up…she just never stops,” she said.
“We often have to pick up our pace just to stick with her.”
Despite committing seven decades to her craft, there is no specific end date in sight for Lorraine.
But Jo believes “the day Allie leaves will be the day she goes”.
“She’s stoic, there’s no way she will stop until Allie closes the shop,” Jo said.
“It’s something we’ve done together, so when mum can’t do it anymore, that’ll be it,” Allie said.
“It’s our thing, its something we’ve done and it wouldn’t be the same without her.”
The hours may be long and the labour intensive for a florist, but for Lorraine, its all worth it.
“It’s a very rewarding job, making something and being proud of it and then the customer ringing up to say thank you it was beautiful.
“It’s rewarding and it’s never never boring. Every day is different.”
Lorraine said: “My father always said: ‘Stay on your feet, don’t grumble. Better to wear out than rust out’ and that’s a good saying.”
