Surviving the pandemic, Becky Smith’s flower shop is an Island institution

Small business owners on Shelter Island had to endure unexpected challenges when the pandemic struck two years ago, but probably none of them had their businesses affected by a cutback in flights from Ecuador to the United States.

Becky Smith’s shop, Shelter Island Florist on North Ferry Road, like all flower and plant shops in the U.S., depends on wholesalers who import from South America. Most people don’t realize how interconnected businesses — even small, local ones — are dependent on international trade, Ms. Smith said.

“It was hard to get any plants or flowers,” said Ms. Smith, who has been in business here for more than 40 years. “Everyone was affected. In the countries that export flowers to the U.S., there were laid-off workers and crops weren’t grown. Fertilizer wasn’t produced. Before the pandemic there were four flights a day to Miami from some countries in South America, and that was cut to two.”

A trade magazine, Rio, noted that Miami International Airport is a landing spot annually for around 187,000 tons of flower imports from Colombia and Ecuador, and the latter is the third largest exporter of roses in the world.

And it wasn’t just a cutback from South America. Those tulips bought in spring from a florist or supermarket to brighten a kitchen or dining room most likely came from the Netherlands, which exports two billion a year. With flights canceled, every retailer took a hit.

Ms. Smith said that a lack of product was one thing, but her business was deemed nonessential during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, the florist industry, which depends on other businesses, and not just individual customers to thrive, suffered, according to the market research firm Ibisworld.com: “Social distancing guidelines have hampered revenue sourced from complementary industries, such as the wedding services industry and the funeral homes industry.”

“But phone calls for orders kept coming, and we made out O.K.” Ms. Smith said. She delivered to Island customers, but had to close her shop to visitors who come to browse and buy.

Normally she works six days a week and is in the shop for an hour or so on Sundays, but during the pandemic it became a full seven days.

She swung into action, and had plants for sale outside on an honor system, with a box for cash, and pads for people to leave notes. She was also on the road twice a week to Patchogue to pick up plants and flowers from a wholesaler.

Also outside the shop was a cooler with fresh eggs from the chickens she keeps at her Brander Parkway property. “Our loyal customers stayed loyal,” she said, and the business weathered the pandemic storms. 

In business since 1980, her shop has had multiple locations, including in the Heights, and on West Neck Road. She didn’t see a career in the florist trade when she was younger, but there had been an affinity for and love of nature and presenting growing things in fetching ways from the time of her childhood.

“I was always picking flowers, or weeds,” she said with a laugh, “or even branches, and bringing them into the house and putting them in jars.”

Another influence was her grandmother, Estelle Hoye, an accomplished artist who had studied at the Pratt Institute, and was renowned for her watercolors, many of them of flowers. At one point, Ms. Hoye’s work was sold by her granddaughter in the flower shop. “And I sold cards of her work,” she said.

Married and “with children coming along,” she was living in a house where a farmer had grown crops and had a farmstand, where flowers were sold. “I thought — this is a good time to have a flower shop,” Ms. Smith said, filling a need on Shelter Island and being involved in something she loved.

“I had no business sense,” she said. “I mean, at all. I had to learn as I went along.”

The hot items this spring are daffodils, of course, which is also Ms. Smith’s favorite flower. (At least this time of year.) And orchids have become increasingly popular, especially, for some reason, for owners of large houses on the Island.

A last question: How is it to spend most days of the week in a beautifully scented environment? “After a while, you don’t smell it,” she said. “People come in and say, ‘Oh, that smell!’ I have to stop and think, ‘Is it the compost out back?’ No.”

She’s just reminded that it’s  a nice place to be.