General News
13 June, 2025
Local florist reminisces on four decades
Flowers have been a decades long passion of Alan Randell-Smith who revels in both the calm of his floristry business and bustle of the flower market.
Maryborough’s local florist might seem unassuming, quiet and dark right in the town’s centre, but Alan Randell-Smith has spent over four decades in the industry with no sign of stopping.
Alan Randell Smith Florist, placed in the heart of Maryborough, is the quiet wind down of a jam packed career.
Floristry has taken Mr Randell-Smith across the nation and internationally with more awards than there’s space to list.
Moving out of the food industry when he was 28, Mr Randell-Smith shifted his life to Victoria trying to kickstart his career in floristry.
In the 42 years since, he has received a gold medal in London for the 1998 Chelsea Flower Show and five gold medals in the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, just to name a few.
He judged internationally for over a decade and has life membership and achievements across multiple organisations.
But passers-by may never know behind the small shop front and modest florist within.
“Floristry is sometimes taken as a backyard interest for old people. It’s not. It’s a vibrant trade that can only be influenced by those who are in it but not sometimes appreciated by people who buy the flowers. They don’t understand how long it takes,” he said.
Mr Randell-Smith will be the first to admit that flowers are expensive but like a duck paddling on a calm lake there’s a frantic system of logistics that get a gerbera into a country town.
“There’s been 12 weeks or 13 weeks of someone attending to that flower,” he said.
“All the labour and knowledge … they’re treated like little babies.”
After his partner, Victor Cook, passed away around 10 years ago Mr Randell-Smith tried retiring but it wouldn’t stick.
“What else am I going to do? Sit at home and reminisce,” he said.
Instead he continues seeing the highs and lows of the local community reflected in his clients, and his own, care for all sorts of occasions.
“We used to always say in the industry we’re here for the whole gamut. We’re there for the hatched, matched, and dispatched,” he said.
Working with locals, preparing celebrations and tributes for the highs and lows, means to some extent he has to turn his mind off and focus on the work.
“It was just like when my partner died. I wanted to do the flowers for his funeral. You have to close your mind off to a certain extent and it becomes a job you do,” he said.
A small town means he may have known the person who has passed away. It’s a privilege, he said, to create something the person would have liked.
“That’s your own little tribute to them. No-one else really knows, but you know,” he said.
“It’s a great privilege really to be the person who puts those flowers together for that last tribute to somebody.”
Weddings are a different kind of privilege for Mr Randell-Smith. The flowers, like everything else outside the bride and groom, are there to enhance their day.
“It’s all an enhancement of two people, that’s all it is,” he said.
Weddings, funerals, anniversaries and celebrations. These all have deadlines that won’t budge. They define Mr Randell-Smith’s work.
“This industry is so time driven. You can’t be late for funerals, you can’t be late for weddings, you’ve got to be on time for delivery. Suddenly someone is leaving work at 3 pm, you’ve got to have the flowers there before three,” he said.
“It’s much more stressful than people realise. Floristry looks fun, it looks easy, but underneath you’re like a duck paddling like mad underneath trying to look as calm as you can on top.”
Mr Randell-Smith’s love of flowers is enough to get him out of bed at 3 am to head to the flower market in Epping.
Forklift drivers zipping around like “kamikaze pilots”, yelling wholesalers trying to sell their wares, the “terrible” egg and bacon burgers — it’s a scene with the hustle and bustle of a fish market.
“It’s freezing cold, you’re drinking coffee and talking rubbish, and then you pack up your stuff and you go back to your little shop and you see each other four days later,” he said.
“It’s fabulous, I love it.”
From the average market through to Mother’s or Valentine’s Day, Mr Randell-Smith keeps coming back again and again..
“There are just flowers everywhere, for me it’s exciting. A visual kaleidoscope. It’s just beautiful,” he said.