The Other Rose Bowl
The problem with Valentine’s Day, says Jacob Maarse, is that too many customers want the same thing: long-stemmed red roses delivered to somebody’s office at 9 a.m.
At Jacob Maarse Florist, a Pasadena institution, the phones will start to ring about midday with customers checking to see that their Valentine orders have been delivered.
“We’re not like UPS--we can’t track them instantly,” Maarse chuckled one day last week. “One year we finally just took the phone off the hook.
“We try not to take more than 500 Valentine’s Day deliveries,” he added, noting that 150 deliveries a day is a non-holiday average, “but sometimes good customers come in at the last minute. . . .”
Maarse’s shop at Green Street and El Molino Avenue has been a destination for flower lovers since the Dutch-born owner, who was raised in a family of flower growers, opened it almost 30 years ago.
Today, at 69, overseeing a staff of 50 and a fleet of flower-stenciled vans, he enjoys a reputation for unusual and elegant flower designs. For 25 years, he has created the bouquets for the Tournament of Roses queen and her court (“They used to want only want red, red, red, but this year we got to use a gorgeous creamy pink”), and he’s in constant demand for weddings, debutante balls and society parties.
Maarse, who combines an Old World courtliness with a twinkling sense of humor, knows his customers so well that he often is asked what kinds of flowers he would suggest for a specific person. For him, it is the best possible career, and nothing is more energizing than going to the downtown flower market on Wall Street.
“I hate to get up that early, but once I’m there, I love it. The beautiful freshness of those flowers, the unbelievable color. People in the flower business are fun. I can’t think of anything in the world I would prefer to do.”
This week, his staff is gearing up for Valentine’s Day. Maarse ordered between 12,000 and 15,000 roses (Black Magic and Vogue are the top varieties this year) more than a month ago.
He notes, however, that roses are never the best buy on Valentine’s Day, when supply and demand drive up prices and a dozen red roses will cost between $65 and $125.
“We can make wonderful arrangements of mixed flowers with maybe a rose or two and some red anemones. I think those are more attractive, but the male customers want red roses.” Extra delivery vans have been rented for all those roses.
On Wednesday, his staff will start “greening” the vases, putting in the green foliage, and on Thursday it’ll kick into high gear.
“We’ll probably work from 5 a.m. to midnight. By Friday morning, we must have everything made for the offices, then on Friday we will make up the deliveries for Saturday.”
No matter how organized everything is, he keeps his fingers crossed.
“Everyone gives 100%, from the drivers to the designers. It’s a fun day, because the things we make are so colorful and people like them. But I’m always glad when it’s over.
“We have a wonderful staff, we like what we are doing, and we do it hard,” said Maarse, whose wife, Clara, is his business manager. “I’ve always worked six days a week since I came to this country.”
He was 19 then, with a work permit as a horticulture specialist.
“I was in New York first, staying at the YMCA on 43rd Street, and that was definitely not a garden,” he recalled.
He took a Greyhound bus to San Francisco, where an uncle was a violinist in the symphony, and then moved on to Pasadena.
He has long been active in civic groups and often designs for movie and TV productions.
“Movies are fun because you learn so much from the set designers,” he said. For one of the “Beverly Hills Cops” films, which opens with a holdup in a jewelry store, he produced a huge arrangement in a crystal vase. “The idea was for the vase to be shot and to shatter, but it didn’t work. . . . We had to make six or eight before they finally used a tiny bit of plastic explosive.”
(When a friend asked whether he didn’t hate seeing his flower arrangements shot, he answered like a businessman: “For what they are paying me, I don’t mind!”)
But the mainstay of his business is “people buying flowers just to be happy.” Having grown up in the world’s most flower-conscious country, Maarse relishes the idea of flowers being part of everyday life, not just something for big events.
He has watched the growing importance of flower design with approval.
“Europeans used to be so snobbish about their superiority,” he said. “They did lead the way--think of the English country gardens at a time when Americans were still taming the frontier. But now we’re catching up.”
Despite his expertise, Maarse isn’t doctrinaire on flower design rules. Just the gentleness of bringing flowers from outside into your home is artistry, he said.
“If you have a garden full of geraniums that smell wonderful and you go out and cut a big basket and you put geraniums all over your house with loving care into the vessels, that’s all that matters. That’s the way you like them.”
He does not subscribe to the idea that flowers have feelings and respond to music or soft words.
“I hope they don’t have feelings--I cut a hundred a day,” he chuckled. “Flowers do love water, though. They hate to be out of water.”
