Gympie Flowers & Gifts

Just order 48 hours in advance! We don't offer same-day flowers (delivery or collection) on Mondays or Tuesdays, but we can provide them on those days.

Sorry if it's confusing. It's just because growing our own flowers takes a lot of hours' work, so we need a couple days set aside each week mostly dedicated to getting more plants in the ground and weeding, etc. If we don't have any advanced orders for Monday or Tuesday, we don't have to pick flowers those days and prepare all the stems. We can dedicate those hours to growing more flowers! 🙂

Many florists are becoming more eco-friendly, which is such a wonderful thing for an industry based on the beauty of nature!

A shop that says they're an eco florist takes particular steps, such as:

1. Buying only Australian grown flowers, especially from farms closest to the florist.
2. Using plastic-free bouquet wrapping and jute string, to tie-off.
3. Switching from floral foam, which is made of micro plastics and toxins, to reusable methods of holding flowers in a vase.
4. Limiting other plastics and buying as local as possible, for other floristry goods.

We do all this PLUS:

1. Growing our own flowers means the only fuel that's been used to get them into our shop is calories! 😉 
2. Growing our own flowers keeps a lot of of plastic out of the landfill (every 5 to 10 stems of wholesale flowers comes in a plastic wrap).
3. Growing our own flowers organically invites bugs, which feeds local birds without poisoning them. This eco-helpful way of growing flowers is the ultimate in eco-floristry.

We're passionate about it, especially because pesticides are proving detrimental to bees and bugs. If there's no bees and bugs, there's no us.

The Guardian reports: "Bees may take generations to recover from one exposure to insecticides" HERE

This is the top concern when buying flowers, and rightfully so. Basically, you get the best value flowers the fewer middlemen there are and the faster they get from plant to posy. 

Tip 1 - Avoid the biggest middleman: Million dollar companies are posing as local florists, online, to collect your order and take a cut of 30 to 60%. If a florist's website has:

• no social media links;
• no photo of the owner, staff or shop;
• no listed street address that checks out;

that site most likely exists to pocket a part of your order and pass the cheaper order to a florist who'll deliver it. Here is an ABC report: CLICK. Report by the SMH: CLICK. 

So, just order directly with the shop that will make your order.

"Our industry is getting a bad reputation as consumers are paying order gatherers for flowers worth a certain amount, but when they get delivered they are only worth a fraction of the price." - Charles Lukasik, Australian Florists Network founder.

TIP 2: Local flowers. A lot of florists have excellent relationships with local flower farms and want to support Australian farms by buying only Australian flowers. This also helps them be better able to fill your bouquet with fresher, higher quality flowers, because they've skipped:

1. the cost associated with extra handling.
2. Extra shipping costs.
3. Extra time in transit, out of water.

TIP 3: Super local flowers. Some florists grow their own flowers, which means they can also provide:

1. Quality "fussy flowers," like dahlias and cosmos, that only last well in a vase if they've been kept in water after the moment they were cut. 
2. Perfectly shaped zinnias, because their petals rarely recover after being bent during transit in a flat box.
3. More unique blooms that most flower farmers aren't growing, such as frilly cosmos, peony-like asters and pastel poppies.

The only trouble is finding such a florist! 😉

We make flower arrangements to order, however, if we have the time, and you have time to wait, we may be able to create a bouquet from our freshly picked flowers for you. Our studio space is behind the service counter, so you can see how we put it together! 

That said, after midday, once all the orders have gone out, we sometimes lock the shop up, to go out and garden, so it's best to phone in advance. 🙂

In 2021, when we were first lifting off, Gympie Farm Flowers was a name that stated what we did, where and how. Picking between our 20-or-so creative business names was too hard, so we chose a temporary name of just the facts, for the website, signs and cards. We are very creative people, so Gympie Farm Flowers didn't "feel" like us. However, our other ideas were either always taken or we'd realise something about them didn't work.

Time ticked on, and then Belinda realised how much the word "joy" resonated with everything we did. Joy for nature, joy for the birds and the bees, joy in the beauty of flowers, joy in our customer's giving, the joy of those receiving... When we also realised it fit us, because our personalities are mostly joyful and upbeat, and we love the saying, "the joy of the Lord is your strength," we had to find a way to infuse "joy" into a flowery name.

Answering the phone, "Flora Joy," is a joy to say, finally! However, we're allowing the transition from Gympie Farm Flowers to be gradual, replacing cards etc, as they're used up, instead of adding them to landfill.

As always, it's our joy to share the joy of flowers with you! Our name now says that. 🙂

Boy, do we have a list for you! check out our page that explains all the flowers we grow, by the season: CLICK

Your flowers leave the shop either in a vase or a pocket of fresh water with a solution of flower food to promote longevity. After a day or so, hold your vase over the sink, gently hold back the stems and slowly tip the old water out, to replace with fresh clean water. Flowers last longest when kept away from a heat source, fan and bright light, including sunlight.

As local fruit has seasons, so do local flowers. For a tiny example, spring is the season for sweet peas and delphiniums. Summer has cosmos and foxgloves. Autumn showers us in dahlias and asters. And winter treats us to stock flowers and poppies (in our sub tropical region).  

Most flowers have a bloom period of less than 4 months (some only a few weeks!), so when a florist says they use "seasonal flowers", they're opting to use blooms closer to home, instead of relying too much on flowers flown in from countries with different seasons.

We use 100% seasonal flowers and 0% imported flowers.