Mother’s Day Keeping Flower Growers Busy

Next Sunday, Mother’s Day, will wrap up the busiest selling period of the year for flower growers everywhere, including Oxnard-based Pyramid Flowers Inc.

The Mother’s Day rush, which lasts about two weeks at Pyramid, has been strong this year, reports Yolanda Van Wingerden, the company’s sales and marketing manager.

“Our industry lost a lot of business on Secretaries’ Day because the President declared it a day of mourning for Nixon’s funeral,” she says. “A lot of offices closed, so a lot of bosses didn’t buy flowers.”

Van Wingerden says Pyramid, whose president is her brother, Fred, has had to get out of the chrysanthemum business because that field has been taken over by growers in Colombia and other Latin American countries.

Pyramid now concentrates on bouvardia and other so-called novelty flowers.

Van Wingerden, 29, a native of the Netherlands, has just been named so-called Pacific link for young executive members of the Wholesale Florists & Florist Suppliers of America.