Olympic Flower Bouquets

There's a nice story behind the Olympic flower bouquets presented to medal winners at the 2010 Winter Games.

We all realize how long, arduous and fraught with peril the journey to the podium is for the athletes, but it turns out the bouquet’s journey from garden to podium no piece of cake is either.

The hand-tied bouquets, conceived by June Strandberg of Just Beginnings Flowers and Margitta Schultz, owner of Margitta’s Flower Boutique went through 23 different design iterations of the bouquet before the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) approved finally on the podium.

The predominately green bouquets contained eye-catching green Hypericum berries, five striking green ‘Revert’ spider mums, and layers of leather leaf, loops of monkey grass, and folded, broad aspidistra leaves. The finished product was hand-wrapped in recycled paper and secured in simple shoelace style with a royal blue ribbon embossed with "2010 Olympics" in white.

Between 80 and 150 bouquets were made each day, most by 22 novice florists trained. By the time the last medal was awarded, these women had turned out a total of 1,800 bouquets.