It’s 5 p.m., and Heidi Haas-Sheard still has a dozen flower arrangements to make. She creates a memorial service floral arrangement, the silver, blue and white flowers are a nod to his beloved Raiders team, with pops of his favorite color pink.
Haas-Sheard owns her family’s business, Swiss Flower and Gift Shop in Wheat Ridge, which she bought from her sister 36 years ago. She creates artistic floral arrangements in a workspace tucked inside the shop among curated gifts and home décor.
Raised around the business, Haas-Sheard started by sweeping the floors of the business before moving up to more complicated tasks. She’s been arranging flowers for 45 years.
Everything is custom-made at the shop, and Haas-Sheard creates floral arrangements for all occasions while considering color palette, price range and style. She asks customers questions like: “Are you more of a pastel person or more understated and earthy? Do you like more neutral or textural looks?” She looks at a customer’s clothes to get a sense of the colors they like.
“There’s always logic to what you like,” Haas-Sheard said.
Haas-Sheard encourages customers making big decisions, like brides, to pay attention to what draws their eye—or what doesn’t.
“Flip through some pictures and either your eye is drawn to it or it’s not,” Haas-Sheard said.
Haas-Sheard attended interior design school, and she uses that training to organize her shop in an artistic way. She often enjoys the mental chess game of rearranging the layout of the shop in her head.
She also uses her interior design skills in floral arranging—though it’s a different palette and platform. She not only considers the colors, but pays attention to how people will experience the arrangement. She shapes it into something beyond a mound of flowers.
“You want to have your ins and outs where your eye has a place to land,” Haas-Sheard said.
Arranging flowers is more than grabbing pinks and purples. For a boho-chic bouquet for a client who prefers an earthy look, she fills a bouquet with only a few flowers and lots of greenery and leaves. She builds texture with pieces of different sizes and shapes. She sticks a large burgundy sunflower and a dried lotus pod into the bouquet. Little bunny tail ornamental grass pokes out.
The art of floral arrangement is like creating art on a canvas, except the medium is living—and the customer may want the final product finished by the time they’re done browsing the shop.
Perhaps the most important consideration is the integrity of the arrangement. It needs to last, not just look pretty. She cuts and cleans the stems for longevity and constructs frameworks for the flowers. She’s engineered arrangements out of everything from cowboy boots and fishing equipment to skis and a helmet.
Haas-Sheard is also in charge of selecting flowers at the wholesale house. She knows her favorites and the combinations that work well together. She anticipates what same-day orders might come in at the shop. She thinks about flowers like lilies that take three days to open and only come in on certain days. The rest she leaves up to intuition. She selects flowers from a wide range of colors and keeps an eye out for new varieties.
“Having the ability to go and see all the options of flowers is a pretty nice treat that I get to play with every day,” Haas-Sheard said.
She thinks about the geography of the flowers. Gerbera daisies are trucked down from Canada. Roses are usually grown in Ecuador and flown to the United States.
“I know the path that these flowers have had to come,” Haas-Sheard said.
She thinks about the flowers knocked off in the process by eager shoppers before they can even be used.
“How sad is that?” Haas-Sheard said. “All the effort to get this stem here—it’s pretty crazy how much labor is involved in just getting the flowers to then be put in a vase or used.”
Whether it’s an elaborate arrangement or a single stem, Haas-Sheard believes flowers can carry deep meaning. She feels proud that she can use her hands to turn them into art.
“I enjoy what I do,” Haas-Sheard said. “I think the diversity of what I have is what keeps every day fresh. I never know what my day is going to bring.”
She views floral art as a gift in her life, one that others can enjoy too. She urges people to try arranging flowers themselves and advises them not to overthink the process.
The shop is closed on Sundays, Haas-Sheard’s only day off, but you still may find her there, catching up on work.
