Three generations of florists at Heights Floral, Hood River

Woosley and her late husband, Roger, purchased the building from Bonnie and Ray Calmettes on Feb. 1, 1979. The Calmettes had owned the building since the 1930s and Woosley described her first experience owning a flower shop during Valentine’s Day.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” Woosley said.

They survived that first Valentine’s Day and 23 more after that when Woosley turned the business over to her daughter in 2002. At that time, Cederstam had already been in charge of another store in The Dalles, called Tammy Hall Floral. She owned and ran both shops for several years and later closed The Dalles store serving everyone from the Hood River location.

The shop creates arrangements for weddings, funerals, and parties, but a lot of their business continues to come from their wire services system. Through the system, local flower shops can prepare and deliver flowers worldwide.

“You can go through every single state, and every single city and they’ll have affiliated florists in each one,” said Hall. Wire services and ordering directly through their website remain two of Heights Floral’s most popular services.

When Hood River became a popular wedding destination, Cederstam noticed a rise in demand for locally-sourced flower arrangements.

“It wasn’t just the local brides, it was brides calling from all over that were wanting to come and getting married,” she said. “We would maybe do a few weddings a year, until all of a sudden, I think one year we did 103 weddings.”

The business was forced to adapt again when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country. The shop introduced green and tropical plants, which became an outlet for many during lockdown.

“People were wanting to buy these plants to decorate their zoom area offices,” Cederstam said, who ran the shop solo for four months. Eventually, she was able to bring a few employees back and the shop was able to stay afloat.

Cederstam owned the shop for more than 20 years before she felt it was time to pass the torch to her son. Hall took over in January and said he has learned more about plants and flowers in the past few months than he has in his entire life.

The art of arranging

Hall has been in the real estate industry for 10 years and said he never saw himself as the owner of a plant and flower shop, but he’s embracing the learning curve.

“It was, in a lot of ways, kind of unexpected, and it’s been a really kind of neat journey to figure those pieces out,” he said.

Hall credits his team for the shop’s vision. Heights Floral currently employs five people, and Hall said the job is not for everyone.

“You have to bring in these creatives, these people that have space and have this ability to see things and to put things together in a certain way that evokes beauty,” he said.

Employees are expected to have a savvy business sense and nimble fingers to create small boutonnieres, but even more important is their eye for creativity. Each bouquet or arrangement will look slightly different depending on the customer’s situation, but at the end of the day, Hall says, the arrangement should be something they remember.

Some customers are specific in their requests and others leave it up to the florists. Hall says it’s all in the details.

“Every color has a meaning. Different flowers have different kinds of meanings,” he said. “You must keep in mind that whatever you are designing or arranging for, whether it is a wedding or a funeral, you want to make it memorable. You want to make it special for them.”

Hall said they always put their “crispiest greens” along with an odd number of flowers to best mimic nature.

“You’ll oftentimes never see two of the same flower or four of the same flower. An arrangement will always be odd. The reason why is because that invokes nature. Oftentimes, when everything’s even, it’s not appealing, it’s not fun,” Hall said. He added that when they are an odd number of flowers your eyes tend to move around the whole arrangement.

The flower and plant shop has been on the Heights since the 1970s, but Hall still wants to cultivate the human connection. He said they are planning to host workshops in the future.

The shop can create custom arrangements, but they also sell tropical plants, indoor plants, cacti and other succulents as well as plant care products. 

Until then, Heights Floral is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. The shop is located at 1215 12th St. next to the Tropicali Fruit Bar on the Heights.