Since 1994
Thirty years in the same storefront, four mornings a week at the flower market, and five people who between them speak most of the languages spoken on this block.
The shop
Woodside Floral opened in 1994 in a storefront that had been a bakery, a shoe repair and briefly a video rental. Rosalie Quintero, who now owns it, started here washing buckets at sixteen and bought the business from its founder in 2006.
What changed over thirty years is everything and nothing. The neighborhood turned over several times — Irish, then Filipino, then Ecuadorian, then Bangladeshi and Nepali, mostly all at once — and the flowers people ask for changed with it. What did not change is that somebody walks in on the worst day of their life needing help, and somebody else walks in on the best one.
We have learned which chapels want deliveries at the side door. We know that white chrysanthemums mean one thing in one household and something entirely different in another, and that the correct response to not knowing is to ask rather than to guess. We know the 7 train is not a delivery plan. Thirty years is mostly a very long list of things like that.
Rosalie or Miguel is at the Manhattan flower market on 28th Street four mornings a week, in the van, at four in the morning. Everything is conditioned when it arrives — stems cut, foliage stripped, into clean water with fresh solution — before any of it is sold. Design work happens on the bench from about nine. Deliveries leave in two waves, early afternoon and late afternoon.
Nothing is pre-made. There is a cooler of finished arrangements for people who walk in needing something in five minutes, and it is restocked from that morning's flowers, not from last week's leftovers.
What we hold to
If it will not hold five days in fresh water it does not go in your bouquet, whatever it cost us. What does not make the cut goes into the staff room, which is why the staff room always looks lovely.
Talking a couple out of two thousand dollars of centerpieces they did not need is a normal Tuesday. A wedding is not the moment to maximize a ticket.
Sympathy work is priced the same in February as it is in August, and we do not upsell at a moment like that. It is the one category where we would rather make nothing than make a mistake.
Everything in our gallery came off our bench. If a picture you show us was helped along in Photoshop, we will tell you which part of it nature will not do.
The people
Five of us. Everything that leaves this shop was made by one of these people, by hand, on the day.
Owner & Lead Designer
Rosalie took over the shop from its founder in 2006, having started here washing buckets at sixteen. She designs every wedding personally and still does the 4 am market run on Wednesdays. If you have ever received a bouquet from this shop that made you stop in the doorway, it was probably hers.
Weddings · Garden-style design · Market buying
Event & Installation Director
Miguel runs everything with a loading dock attached — galas, launches, suspended installations and the sort of ballroom turnaround that has to happen in ninety minutes. He came to us from a Midtown hotel banqueting team and has never once been late to a venue.
Large-scale installation · Corporate events · Logistics
Floral Designer
Daniela does most of the everyday bench work, which means most of what leaves this shop passed through her hands. She has an unreasonably good eye for color and is the person who will talk you out of the arrangement you asked for and into the better one.
Everyday design · Sympathy work · Color
Plants & Greenery
Arun keeps the plant wall alive and is the reason our orchids re-bloom. He spent eleven years in a Long Island greenhouse before joining us, and he will ask which way your window faces before he sells you anything.
Orchids · Foliage · Repotting & plant rescue
Shop Manager
Caitlin runs the counter, the phones, the delivery board and the subscription accounts. She is the person who calls the funeral home to confirm the chapel time, and the reason nothing on the delivery board has ever quietly gone missing.
Subscriptions · Delivery scheduling · Corporate accounts
The neighborhood
We are on 61st Street, a short walk from the 61st Street–Woodside station where the 7 and the Long Island Rail Road meet. Roosevelt Avenue is one block south, Queens Boulevard three blocks north.
Our same-day delivery zone covers Woodside, Sunnyside, Astoria, Long Island City, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, Maspeth, Corona, Rego Park, Middle Village, Forest Hills, Ridgewood and Roosevelt Island. Beyond that we deliver next day across the rest of Queens, Manhattan below 96th Street and northern Brooklyn.
Come in
Monday – Friday: 8:00 am – 7:00 pm
Saturday: 8:00 am – 6:00 pm
Sunday: 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Order by 1:00 pm for today
Call the shop and speak to a designer, or send us the details and we will call you back within the hour. We will tell you what is genuinely beautiful today rather than what a photograph promised in March.