Blooming bouquets and early mornings

He's up in the middle of the night snipping, stripping and pinning blooms into shape. It's dark outside but he works away intently on his craft. A colour theme will determine what flowers he'll use. Roses and lilies are currently popular.

It's a busy, intricate and creative few hours. It can start as early as 5.30 a.m. John Donnelly, a Ballinasloe-based florist, works quickly, preparing all the bouquets, buttonholes and posies for a wedding later that day.

It's hard work, he says. In order to ensure flowers arrive at their freshest and most beautiful, he rises early to create all the necessary arrangements and floral ornamentations. There are intense spurts of activity in the flower business. The busiest times are usually at weekends, and the summer months are also very busy. A florist is busy at Christmas-time and all through the spring and summer, too, he says.

"You need to be creative. You have to be dedicated. Everything has to be perfect, so you have to plan and understand that flowers don't last."

A wedding commission can include the bouquet for the bride, as well as for the bridesmaids, with baskets or posies for the flower-girls. Then the mothers must have corsages, and they must prepare flowers for the altar and the aisle in the church, as well as the hotel lobby and its reception rooms. The men must have buttonholes too. Even the cars have to be decorated. "It must be perfect," say Donnelly, who appreciates the importance of satisfying clients who employ the Donnellys to look after the flowers on their wedding day.

It's important to be able to get on with people, he says. For funerals, "people can be emotional, and you have to be able to deal with that. They can just break down. You have to be sensitive at those times. But there are a lot of happy occasions too." An ability to listen is important, he explains. At school he especially loved art and studying agricultural science was easy too because of his background in the business. His artistic interest and flair finally directed him towards a career in the family business which was set up by his parents over 30 years ago on Station Road in Ballinasloe, Co Galway. "You have to like it to do it," he says. "You have to put everything into it. If you didn't like it you couldn't create nice work, you couldn't do it, you have to put your heart into it." He runs the business with his older sister, Geraldine and their father, Gerry Donnelly.

"There are no set hours, but we're open from 9.15 a.m. and work until 6.30 or so. We wouldn't be open on Sundays, but often you have to do up flowers for neighbours. We do everything - bouquets, wreaths, corporate arrangements.

"I grew up with flowers. They were everywhere." He finished his Leaving Cert in the summer of 1998 and decided to do a PLC course in floristry at Crumlin College of Further Education. He was the only male and the first, he believes, in a class of nine. Their subjects included computers, business studies and art. They had to create a window display as well.

There's great demand now to develop into a range of areas such as dried flowers, which would be suitable for visitors who want a gift to take to the maternity hospital in the town, he says.