Floresta Story & Photos by Bradley Hawks The shop is part museum, part fairytale, part secret garden and part imagination. It’s very much a workshop for the design of hope, gratitude, appreciation and, most of all, love. Dried flowers dangle from a tin rocket wired to the ceiling. The walls are adorned with multicolored bottles of every shape, color, thickness and size. The flowers all take slightly familiar shapes, though it’s as if they have been dredged through some mystic filter of daydreams and reverie. Juan Carlo Bermudez is lovingly placing deep violet and white anemones in a vase amidst cream-colored roses. He grins at me as if he knew I was coming, and pulls a rose from the vase. “Here, you have to smell this,” he says. Though I momentarily seize up in a horrifying flashback of the last time my brother spoke those words, I instantly know that anything coming from this place must be beautiful and pure—and so I inhale what is quite possibly the most delicious bouquet of flowers I have ever smelled. Carlo, as his niece calls him, waits for me to return from my dreamy state, and then he gestures toward the door. “Let us go grab a coffee and sit and talk,” he says. We stroll a few blocks in the crisp spring air, and find ourselves on the patio of Café Henri, where he orders me a latte and a crepe doused in Grand Marnier. We relax as he shares with me the story of his flower business. The third generation of florists in his family, Bermudez remains grounded in the history of his Colombian grandfather who grew orchids. When he decided to begin his own flower business, he flew to France and rented a car, visiting flower shops throughout the country for the better part of a month. “I collected ideas, colors, and thousands of little things that came together in a beautiful way,” says Bermudez. “It is unique, because it’s full of tiny distractions from everywhere.” 42 | BOROMAG.COM | MAY 2015 Bermudez is also deeply invested in the education of his niece. He even offered his services at the New York Flower Academy in exchange for her education and training. The two now collaborate and work together daily. During coffee, we are perpetually interrupted by the unbelievable amount of people who know Carlo, simply swinging by to say hello. Even the man delivering his avocados to the restaurant knows Carlo by name and stops by to chat. Only an independent florist for five years, Bermudez has been hired to arrange flowers for some of the most prominent museums in the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Something about Bermudez is magnetic and inviting, beyond what is considered average charisma. He lives and breathes a gratitude for life, and displays the willingness and ability to find beauty in unconventional places. That marriage of dark and light is evident in his arrangements, which is why his customers can see a bit of themselves in his work. And that is a gift that is breathtakingly unique. fLorEsta 51-02 Vernon Blvd, LIC 347-642-8108 www.florestanyc.com GREEN LIVING
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