His New Career Is Blossoming Beautifully
Two things had become clear to Joseph Brewster: Orchids were the flower of the hour. And recycling was both parsimonious and politically correct.
And so it was that Brewster came to be the rent-an-orchid man.
About a year ago, Brewster, 43, after eight years as an L.A. florist--and with an A-client list that included Streisand and Taylor, Gucci and Lauren and Sassoon--got a call from client and noted Hollywood talent manager Sandy Gallin: “Do you know anyone who does orchids?”
Quicker than you can say cymbidium, Brewster replied, “Yes, I do.”
Cut flowers had been good to Brewster, but of late business had been less than blooming. He was looking back wistfully on “the golden days of Beverly Hills” and those pre-recession big spenders. Some of his clients had actually begun trekking to the Downtown flower mart to buy wholesale or “sending their maids or whatever.”
Having promised Gallin orchids, Brewster drove to the mart and bought some plants. Soon he was a card-carrying member of the American Orchid Society and was buying from growers and importers from San Diego to Santa Barbara.
By his own admission, at the outset he knew little more about orchids than that the white ones with the purple centers are phalaenopsis. But he’s a quick study. He mentions that he knew nothing about picture framing when he was hired as a picture framer years ago. (He has also been a lifeguard and a preschool teacher.)
Still, it seems that destiny dictated his true calling. As a second-grader in the small Illinois farm town of Clinton, he arranged wildflowers in a vase and won first prize in a school competition. But his first foray into the business was a bust. About 1987, he spotted a vacant West Hollywood storefront and thought, “That would be a nice place for a flower shop.” He opened the door as FLWRS. Six months later, he closed the door. Bad location.
Now he was a free-lance florist, working from home. And doing well. Jon Peters hired him to do flowers for Columbia Studios’ executive offices and Peters’ home. He did flowers for film executive Peter Guber and wife Lynda, for Adrienne Vittadini ads and for an Elizabeth Taylor jewelry collection shoot. Armani and Tiffany called.
Once Gallin got him into orchids, other clients became converts. Brewster’s work days begin at 4:30 a.m. at the flower mart, where Holland Flower Market sells his orchids. By 7 a.m. he’s heading home to Laurel Canyon to tend to his rental orchids--1,200 plants in greenhouses at the 1913 house he shares with roommates, two dogs and three cats.
On Thursdays, he makes the rounds of his regular orchid clients, picking up their rented orchids and delivering fresh ones. He takes the “used” orchids home, where he waters and fertilizes them until they bloom anew--from six months to a year later--and are ready to go to another client.
A blooming plant will last from three to six weeks in a client’s home and, Brewster says, “They’re much more stately than fresh flowers.” There’s also the status thing. Historically, “They were very majestic and royal. Only the wealthy had them.”
But rent-an-orchid clients can have a single spike of orchids in their home for a month or more for as little as $12, including pickup and delivery, or as much as $60, depending on size and rarity of the plant.
To Brewster, recycling just makes sense. Give people an orchid plant, he says, and most don’t know what to do with it once the flowers die, “so they just throw it away.” Properly cared for, a plant will live to bloom again for five to 10 years.
Brewster always told himself he’d “never have a job where I had to drive a lot.” Since January, he has put 20,000 miles on his van, making orchid runs up and down the coast. Recently, Brewster jetted to Hilo to buy Hawaiian orchids at their source.
A one-man operation, he’s been too busy to think up a name for his business, so he just calls himself the orchid man. Soon, the orchid man will be gearing up for the post-holidays, when “people will want to replace all those poinsettias.”
Happy Birthday, John--Wherever You Are
We are 12, elbow-to-elbow on folding chairs in a tiny, windowless room at the Imagine Center, a New Age-y place on Ventura Boulevard in Encino. A serenity fountain gurgles. A creature with pointy ears, feathery wings and a mermaid tail gazes upon us from its frame.
There is the faint aroma of incense. Beyond the door, we can hear strains of “Yesterday.”
Linda Keen sits before us. She’s the star attraction of this evening, which is a one-year celebration for the center and a tribute to slain Beatle John Lennon on what would have been his 55th birthday.
The hype had preceded Keen here from her Ashland, Ore., home. Who could resist a press release promising a demonstration by Keen, “respected John Lennon channeler”?
The little room is very quiet. Then, Keen speaks. She tells us that Lennon “definitely wants us to carry the ball,” to fulfill his dream of a better world. “Gee, don’t we miss him,” isn’t good enough, she adds. Heads nod.
Breathe deeply, she commands. “Say hello to the bottoms of your feet.” We progress from our feet to our spines--we’re to imagine golden roots sprouting from there to the center of the Earth--and up to our heads, where we’re to conjure up an image of Lennon. I sneak a peek around the room. Eyes are reverently closed.
Now that we’ve conjured him up, what are we to do with him? “First, ask him how he is,” Keen intones. “Is he happy? What does he have to tell you about himself?” Be playful, she says--just as he was.
Maybe, she suggests, he’ll give us answers that will set us on proper personal paths.
It’s time for us to say goodby to Lennon, maybe give him a little hug, perhaps arrange to meet again. Now, would any among us care to share our experience?
One young man offers, “he said not to get romantically involved” with a certain female friend, that the attraction is strictly Oedipal. Another says, “He came to me as a magician, and he took me back to my childhood when I believed in magic.”
Although she never met Lennon, Keen, 47, spent five years writing “John Lennon in Heaven,” wherein she converses with the most provocative Beatle. She didn’t seek him out for this otherworldly dialogue, she says--he chose her. In the book, he tells her, “Me and you are gonna be good working together!”
The party here is a gathering of the faithful. Yana Hoffman, 47, a counselor, says through Lennon that she learned to “feel freer to be what I was.” A onetime hippie, she laughs as she recalls that she and her ex-husband posed topless, a la Yoko and John, for a card one Christmas.
Outside, guests gather around Mary Ekler and her keyboard to sing “Imagine.” Inside, Yoko and John flit past on a video.
