A full moon still dominates the sky on a chilly Melbourne morning in June as Emily Bradbury stops to pick me up in her black delivery van. It’s 7am, hours before I’d usually be up, but for Emily, like many of the folks who work in the industries that support hospitality, this is prime time. “I’d normally be done by now,” she laughs. I struggle to find words, my coffee not yet kicked in. “The wholesale market closes at 6am, so I’m often there by three or four. It means I can have a life, because I finish work pretty early.”
Emily is a florist, and an ex-hospo worker, whose business North St Botanical provides floral arrangements for several Melbourne bars, restaurants and cafes, as well as doing weddings, events and funerals. Her approach is left-field, creative, never the same twice. She’s not the guy you hire if you just want a classic rose-and-baby’s breath bouquet at your host stand to be replaced every week.
Emily’s creative, organic approach relies on foraged bits and bobs, donations from client gardens, and flowers grown only in Australia (for reasons of sustainability and workers’ rights). As such, Emily’s arrangements become a key part of the overall aesthetic of the venues she works with.
This morning I’m riding along with her as she visits wholesale flower suppliers, makes up arrangements at her warehouse in Fitzroy North, and does deliveries around town to provide the greenery we’ll be gazing at come cocktail time.
“Mum was a gardener,” Emily says. “When I was just two years old she started teaching me the names of flowers, so it has always been a part of my life. As a wayward teen, I would steal flowers for my mum coming back drunk at night on the way home from the bars.” Never really thinking of flowers as a profession, Emily instead built a career in hospitality, working behind the bar and on the floor across Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But after nearly a decade on the hospo grind, Emily needed a change.
“My husband came home and threw a pamphlet for a florist course on the bed,” she says. “He told me working hospo was making me hate people, which is dumb because I’m a people person.” That was the nudge Emily needed to sign up for a floristry apprenticeship, eventually opening her own business.
Cruising through the big roller doors into one of Melbourne’s wholesale flower warehouses, Emily greets and chats and gossips with everyone around — a people person indeed. She doesn’t seem to follow a shopping list or a particular path that I can discern, instead grabbing whatever takes her fancy. She clearly knows what she has to make today, and for whom, but the process of collecting her ingredients is organic rather than prescriptive, like a chef might do at the markets looking for fresh produce. “They set aside weird stuff for me when they see it,” she says.
There’s a lot in common with what Emily does and a life in hospitality. No day is the same twice, she gets to be creative, and on-the-fly organisation and flexibility are essential. Her high-energy, slightly chaotic, engaging personality seems a perfect fit. “Hospo helped me in so many ways,” to be able to do this work, she says, pointing out with a laugh that she always has a tea-towel slung over her shoulder or tucked in her belt, just like a bartender. “Things like never leaving a room with empty hands, keeping your eyes out for something out of place, those little things that really make a difference,” she says.
As Emily returns to her workshop and unloads her haul for the day, I get to see that creativity in action. She’s a whirlwind of activity, picking out a combination of fresh greenery from today’s run and bits and pieces from the piles of dried branches and other botanical ephemera that clutter the building like a Jim Henson puppet studio. But when it comes to actually making the arrangements, you see that hyper-focus lock in. Every twig, every bud, perfectly placed until she’s satisfied. And these arrangements are beautiful; strange and organic, like vignettes of a fantasy landscape.
Watching her make an arrangement is a lot like watching a bartender make a drink; putting all those elements together into something that works as a whole, and aesthetically pleasing and engaging for guests. “I get to bring beauty into people’s lives for a living,” she says. “How nice is that?”
After loading the flowers back into the van, now fully crafted into arrangements, it’s back out to deliver her creations for the day. The first stop is Short Round cafe in Thornbury where Emily jokes with the laptop and latte folks at the communal table, jostling the old flowers out and the new ones in. Next, it’s Bar Pallino where her tropical creations offset the classic, Italian style chrome-and-marble design of the venue, creating warmth and contrast that transforms the space. She clearly has a bartender’s rapport with the owners, the cooks, anyone she encounters, wherever she goes.
Our last stop before I have to leave her to complete her rounds is fine-diner Chancery Lane in the CBD. Here, large arrangements are a key part of the dining room’s aesthetic, and smaller ones around the room provide pops of colour among pewter candelabras and heavy red velvet curtains. “We see florals as more than just decoration,” says events and sales manager Danielle Hale. “They’re one of those finishing touches that help make a venue feel special and memorable. They bring life and personality into our space, softening the room and helping to create a warm, inviting atmosphere for our guests.”
Collingwood bars Above Board and Hands Down are also among Emily’s clients. Co-owner and bartender Hayden Lambert says they first got flowers into Above Board because some guests struggled with the minimalist aesthetic.
“To offset what people perceive as being a masculine design, it’s important to have flowers,” he says. “For 10 years, it’s the only thing that changes every week, so we always have something new.”
It’s fascinating to see how someone like Emily, no longer hospo but still a critical part of the ecosystem, works to support the industry as a whole. So next time you see a lovely floral arrangement in a venue, say a prayer for Emily Bradbury, up at three in the morning to make the bars of Melbourne more beautiful.
Around the Bars
The People’s Drink. The fifth annual Boothby Drink of the Year Awards Top 50 drinks are here. The winners and the ranking will be announced on Monday 30 November in Sydney, but in the meantime, voting for the People’s Drink of the Year presented by Club Suntory is now open — visit boothby.com.au/drinkoftheyear to check out the list and have your say now.
Two Times Two. On Sunday 1 November, One Or Two celebrates its fourth birthday with two very special guests: Vijay Mudaliar and Adrian Leow from Native in Singapore, a bar deeply connected to Southeast Asian ingredients and culture.
Measured in Years. And speaking of birthdays, Good Measure, the only bar to create a true Melbourne classic since the Japanese Slipper, are celebrating five years on Monday, November 2nd, with guest shifts from Pendant Public House, One or Two, Babine’s, Bar for Now and prodigal son and ex-Speakeasy Group bartender Jack Sottie of Renais Gin, here for a limited time from the UK to grace us with his gorgeous smile.
