We are proudly one of the Most Sustainable Florists in Melbourne.

Local Flowers: Farm-to-Vase Floristry

The Doctors’ Flowers practices Farm-to-Vase floral design, characteristic of the Slow Flower movement.

We source 95% of our flowers from Australian farms, most within 50km of our shop in Caulfield, Melbourne.

As well as supporting local farmers and family businesses, this means our flowers haven’t been sprayed with toxic chemicals like Roundup or flown 11,000km without water like the imported roses you often find in Supermarkets, most of which come from Kenya.

It also means our flowers last longer. Win-win.

Sustainable Techniques: No Floral Foam

We create all our arrangements without floral foam.

Floral foam is a single-use plastic. One block of floral foan1 is the equivalent of using ten plastic bags. That means lots of flower arrangements are sitting in at least 5 plastic bags.

Floral foam also contains chemicals harmful to human lungs, especially when it’s dry. We want to keep our designers and our customers safe - we are The Doctors’ Flowers, after all!

Instead of using floral foam, we use sustainable floristry techniques including hand-tied bouquets, re-useable vases with water, chicken wire for structure, and biodegradable eco-wraps and bags to wet-wrap bouquets when required.

Eco-Packaging: Plant-based Wrapping

We use biodegradable plant-based packaging.

We wrap our flowers in brown Kraft paper which is made from wood pulp, a renewable resource. It can either be recycled or put in the compost to biodegrade.

Non-woven wrap, used by many florists, is oil-based and can’t be recycled or composted, so it ends up adding to landfill and therefore having a much larger carbon footprint.

You won’t find us doing super-fancy wrapping with lots and lots of paper like some florists - we try to minimise our use of paper, and prefer to let the flowers be the focus.

Pressing and Drying Flowers: Petal-to-Stem Floristry

At The Doctors’ Flowers we practice what we call “Petal-to Stem Floristry”. Its a bit like “Nose-to-Tail Eating”, but for flowers.

We figure that a local farmer has worked many hours to make each beautiful flower, and the flower has worked hard to reveal its beauty, so it’s our role as designers and creatives to make the most of it.

That’s why we naturally Air-Dry or Press any remaining flowers to preserve them, and use them in our Dried and Pressed Flower Ranges.

It also means we can offer more unique Dried Flower varieties than most florists and they are preserved chemical-free, unlike the bleached and dyed everlasting flowers popular on Instagram that pollute waterways through their production.

Flower Rescue: Minimising Industry Waste

Beyond our store, we help minimise floral waste across the industry through the Charity we founded, Floral Acts of Kindness Inc., which rescues unsold flowers destined for landfill and transforms them into surprise gift posies for people in Aged Care and Palliative Care.