Stems of Floral Fervor
If the sight of a striking bouquet or floral arrangement makes your heart melt then you’ll love Tortola’s latest flower boutique.
Stems is a quaint new store which just opened up at the old Clarence Thomas Building. But for many it’s not so new, says owner David Penn, just a return to the business he closed five years ago. A burning passion for the art of floral design shared with Alice Maestre, Stems chief designer and manager, led to the reopening just in time for the holidays.
“I missed it,” Penn admits, adding that the closure was meant to dedicate more time to his other businesses. “When you love something you do it really well, and we decided that since we both love it so much, we’re going to make ourselves happy and do what we love.”
Penn had inherited the flower shop his mother started 35 years ago. But even before that, the seeds for the love of flowers were sown by his maternal grandfather who was a botanist. After five years and countless calls from former clients demanding their award winning work, Penn and Maestre teamed up and Stems re-opened in November.
“It’s a one-stop Christmas shop at the moment,” Penn explains, pointing to the wide assortment of Christmas decorations in stock. “We have fruit baskets, wine baskets, wine and cheese baskets; we’re having some specially designed Christmas baskets with cookies and black cake commissioned specially for Stems. We’re also doing edible arrangements for a small but significant market who have expressed interest in that.”
The store’s inventory will change as the seasons dictate, catering to Valentines, Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Easter, and religious feast days. Stems also caters to weddings and other special events down to the arches and trellis, and its designers offer on-site work if requested.
“We’re catering not just to the $300 arrangement crowd, but we’re starting from $15 up so that the little man who needs to have a flower for his girlfriend can come and get something. It may be $15, but it may be a lot of money for that person and we have great respect for that and for any customer whether he spends $1 or $1,000. Whatever we’re going to produce for $15 is going to have the same creativity, the same thought, and the same beauty at that scale that we would in a $1,500 arrangement,” Penn states.
“Anything the customer wants, we will do our best to accommodate them,” adds Maestre, who brings 16 years of floral design experience. “When we’re doing a single rose, it’s not just a rose. The rose needs to represent love and elegance… when you see that, you know that it’s coming from Stems.”
The passion for flowers that these two share is something they’re committed to ensure is reflected in every piece of work that leaves the store.
“Every arrangement that goes out, our name is on that and we need to make sure that the standard is at a certain level every single time. What I can say about us, there is a passion that burns brightly for flowers and floral beauty, and that is something that has to be quenched,” Penn adds.