Fall brings some of the busiest months of the year for weddings and events, along with changing colors, seasonal availability and new sourcing challenges for floral designers.

Florabundance President and Owner Joost Bongaerts joined BloomNation for a conversation about the Fall 2026 floral season. They discuss the colors and varieties designers are requesting, how tariffs and rising transportation costs are affecting flower prices, the importance of planning ahead, and why the relationship between a designer and a knowledgeable wholesale floral consultant matters more than ever.

Watch the conversation below, or continue to the edited transcript.

Edited transcript

Looking ahead to fall flowers and wedding colors

BloomNation: Today we have a special returning guest, Joost Bongaerts from Florabundance, the owner and president, all the way from Carpinteria, California, which is the most beautiful place on Earth. We’ve been there and visited you. Welcome back to Santa Monica.

Joost Bongaerts: It’s nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

BloomNation: Lots to talk about. First, though, most importantly, there are a lot of celebrations. Florabundance has been in business for 32 years.

Joost: That’s right.

BloomNation: And BloomNation, 15 years.

Joost: Fifteen years of BloomNation. Time flies, huh?

BloomNation: It feels like the blink of an eye, but also like a million years at the same time.

Joost: You guys have done an awesome job.

BloomNation: Today we’re here with some crazy beautiful flowers that you brought in to show off our topic, which is going to be fall trends. There’s a lot going on. We’ll talk about tariffs, trends and what designers should know. Tell us what’s going on for fall. I know we’re trying to stay away from the typical and obvious.

Joost: It’s fall season. It’s August, people are looking ahead, and you see crops coming in.

Typically, you see more muted fall tones: oranges, bronzes, earth colors and berries. You see viburnum berries and a lot of fruits coming in during the fall. Then you get into Thanksgiving and pumpkins.

For fall weddings, brides and floral designers look for colors like these. That doesn’t mean you have to use all orange and bronze colors. You can use white and green, which I think has been one of the most popular wedding color combinations we’ve seen this year.

We also have some unique materials here, chocolate cosmos, French and Dutch tulips, garden roses from Alexandra Farms, white tuberose, hydrangea, Nigella pods, gerberas grown in Carpinteria, chocolate lisianthus, foxglove and cherry caramel phlox.

We have a lot of unusual material. That’s something you don’t find at every wholesaler.

BloomNation: Everything seems more elevated. Like you said, it’s not the obvious, typical orange you might see around Halloween. These are more muted fall trends that seem more elegant.

Joost: We saw white and green become a real color combination of choice for weddings this year. But there are also a lot of brides and grooms who like fall colors, or harvest colors, and that’s where we come in.

Our buyers go out of their way to source these flowers, and our customers know Florabundance will have something more unusual.

We’re not your everyday wholesaler. We’re a little different, we think. Especially right now, with the merging of many wholesalers around the country into gigantic outfits, there’s room for boutique wholesalers like Florabundance because of our knowledge and service. Customers can trust what they’re going to get.

Working with a floral consultant

BloomNation: And you get more attention from you guys.

Joost: Yes. It’s a two-way street. You buy our flowers and you get a trusted advisor who can help guide you through the stress of a wedding.

Designers need to get the right material in, and you hear stories like, “I ordered this and I got that.” There’s a small chance of that happening with Florabundance.

We always suggest planning ahead and ordering in advance because some of these flowers come from far away. It’s a global business, even though we use a lot of American-grown flowers, especially California-grown. That complements our full line of flowers.

Flower pricing, tariffs and rising costs

BloomNation: We have all these beautiful flowers, but what about price volatility? How have prices been affected?

Joost: It’s been a rough year for the floral industry and many other industries because of the tariffs we’re dealing with from various countries.

It’s sort of like the weather. You don’t know the forecast because you don’t know what’s going to be new next week or what’s going to be discontinued.

Fuel surcharges are one of the biggest things we have to deal with, along with labor increases in Colombia. Everything has to be flown or trucked in. That creates a tremendous cost increase in the product, and we have to pass that on in our pricing.

BloomNation: It’s hard to absorb those increases.

Joost: And I suggest florists do the same thing when selling an arrangement. Make sure you price it correctly. Do your homework and do your calculations correctly.

People understand. They don’t expect a bargain when they’re getting a nice design. We’re in a quality business. If you want to compare it with a restaurant or fine wine, we’re selling the high-end steak. That costs more. It’s just a fact of life right now.

Labor charges have also gone up in various countries. Hopefully tariffs will change. I think Ecuador recently dropped, while Colombia hasn’t. Holland, I think, is around 16%, but I don’t know the exact numbers anymore. It’s best to check with SAF because they keep track of that information.

Why fall is such an important wedding season

BloomNation: Does seasonality affect this as well? Obviously weddings happen in the fall because of the weather. How does seasonality affect the business?

Joost: Spring weddings are big, but I think we’re seeing a shift because of the hot, humid weather nationwide in much of the country.

September and October are our second-busiest months of the year. Why? Because the weather is nice throughout the country, from Maine to Florida. It cools down, and people like getting married in a nice climate and nice weather.

Floral design trends and designing within a budget

BloomNation: Are there themes you’re seeing bubbling up around specific looks for fall weddings?

Joost: I’m seeing less structured designs. Perhaps because of flower price increases, designers are becoming more creative. They can create a similar look with less expensive flowers.

It’s important to think about how many flowers you put into an arrangement. I’m not a floral designer, but I can critique some things. Sometimes designers put too many garden roses next to each other, for example, and then they all open up.

I think we’re seeing designers become more thoughtful because they still want to produce a beautiful design, but they have to do it within the economics of the event.

BloomNation: Sometimes that kind of pressure creates more innovation. Designers have to become more creative, which pushes the boundaries of their design skills while working within a budget.

Joost: That’s what sets apart a real designer. They’re creators. They’re artists. You have to give them the tools. It just depends on how much paint they use, if they were painting.

BloomNation: That’s where skill really comes into play when resources are limited, and that’s why continuing education is so important.

Education and the wholesaler relationship

Joost: These days everybody seems to be an educator on YouTube, which is great. The more publicity and education, the better.

Organizations like AIFD are still important. We recently worked with Keith White at the California Flower Growers Association, which has changed its name to the American Floral Alliance, or AFA. I’ve been on the board there, and we had designers there. It was great to see what can be done and to see the trends.

BloomNation: The relationship with a wholesaler has become much more important. We were talking earlier about how, when you use Florabundance, you’re not simply getting a salesperson. You’re getting a consultant.

You’re thinking about how to work together to create the right purchase order, serve your clients, and also consider price points and quality.

Joost: We have a very loyal clientele, but we also have a lot of new designers coming in looking for advice. They’ll ask, “How can I make this look with maybe a little less?”

We help them with that.

You need a trusted salesperson. We call them floral consultants. They’re experts in their field. They’re floral designers themselves, and they still do floral design work from time to time when they’re asked.

You have to trust them to do it right.

They use their phones to send customers pictures of flower pulls. Then the customer can say, “This is my budget. Can you work with these numbers? This is the color palette. This is the mood board. Put something together for me.”

That’s how we do a lot of our business these days.

We’re one location. We don’t have the lowest-price roses. Our added value is giving people advice so they’re successful with that important job they have coming up.

BloomNation: It’s really that relationship and the trust they build that allows you to curate the right experience.

Joost: And it doesn’t happen overnight.

BloomNation: Going back to price volatility, that’s where that skill really starts shining. You’re able to put together a great order that makes the client happy while keeping the right price points.

Joost: That’s the educational part. We’re constantly educating, whether it’s the end user about what to get and how to care for flowers, or floral designers working in flower shops or their own studios.

It takes 32 years to get to this level of experience, but it’s fun when you see it work. And the beauty of our business is that it constantly changes.

Look at the flowers here in front of us. This is just a small sampling that fit in the back of my car when I drove down here. I told our buyers, “Put some fall wedding colors together.” And here you go.

How social media has changed flower buying

BloomNation: Instagram has also changed the way people purchase. You’ve become much more prominent on social media and with content. We’re doing this podcast together. That’s become really important.

Joost: This is good because it shows the real product. Flowers speak for themselves.

Pinterest is still big. Sometimes I hear florists say, “Here’s another bride with a Pinterest photo,” but they use it to communicate: “This is the look I want. How do I do this?”

We encourage that.

Social media has been good for the flower industry because you can show what’s out there and what can be done with it, versus just having a picture or description or looking at a name on an order sheet.

This is the flower. It tells the whole story.

What makes Florabundance different

BloomNation: For new designers looking for a wholesaler and someone they can trust with a wedding or event, what should they know about Florabundance?

Joost: Florabundance is different. Why?

We’re one location, and we’re lucky to be located in the largest flower-growing area in the U.S., which is still California.

We’re creative. We buy flowers worldwide, but American Grown is big for us because it always has been. About 70% of our flowers between March and October are grown in the U.S. That’s a significant number.

But you also get a wholesale floral consultant who basically holds you by the hand and guides you through this jungle.

Especially when you’re new, you have a lot of questions. People will say, “Can I ask you a stupid question?” There are no stupid questions in this business. It’s better to ask a question than not ask one.

We want you to succeed.

We used to organize a floral design event called Florabundance Inspirational Design Days. We did it for 14 years, but it stopped during COVID when travel became difficult.

You can still look at the blogs on our website. We had some great designers there, including Hitomi Gilliam, who I think is one of the best teachers in the world, and Kiana Underwood from Tulipina.

We’ve had lots of great designers. More recently, we’ve done Petals of Appreciation with some designers who were students 14 years ago and are now leading event designers in our area.

That’s great to see because it means we did something right, and we’re proud of that.

BloomNation: As education improves, you empower designers. They create a better experience for the end customer, which means more people want to have events and weddings. It helps everyone. It’s an investment in the future.

Joost: More flowers to more people more often. That’s the slogan of the American Floral Alliance.

Advice for new floral designers

BloomNation: BloomNation has thousands of florists across the country. Some are brand-new designers and some have been in business for a long time. Do you have any other thoughts for a designer who’s just starting out?

Joost: What we often see with new designers is that they’re looking for guidance. That’s what we do a lot.

Don’t be afraid to fail with your designs. Get yourself educated. Learn as much as you can.

Don’t buy only on price. Look at the added value you’re getting from your wholesaler. The cheapest place to buy flowers isn’t necessarily the best.

Build a relationship with your local wholesaler, or come to Florabundance and try us out. We ship nationwide overnight, and we’ll help you through the process. It’s a two-way street.

BloomNation: The same way you’ve built a reputation by providing great service and products, reputation really matters for a new designer, especially in the beginning. You want to work with someone who can help make sure everything goes smoothly and provides high-quality flowers.

Joost: Exactly. You don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.

For a floral designer, if you do your designs well or do a wedding well, whether it’s your first wedding or you’ve done five weddings, word of mouth will get you there.

You have to take it seriously. It’s a business. If you take your business seriously, run it like a business.

Do all the things right, and do social media. It’s very important for getting clients, especially around holidays when you want to get orders in early. Stay ahead of the game and market yourself. That’s key.

Closing

BloomNation: It’s been a true pleasure spending time with you, and we’d love to have you back again.

Joost: Thank you for having me. And congratulations on your 15th anniversary. You’ve built a beautiful business.

BloomNation: Thank you so much. If you want to learn more about Florabundance, check out Florabundance.com.

Joost: Our job in the flower business, wholesalers, growers and retailers, is to give designers the colors, the flowers, the varieties and the creativity to make that happen.

At Florabundance, we want to be part of that process from the beginning.

We listen. We guide. We suggest. And we help our designers get it right.

Because when the designers get it right, everybody wins, especially the bride and groom.

Florabundance. We know flowers. We understand designers.