2026 Floralpreneur Workshop

How do you find the best floral workshop for florists?

If you’re looking for a small scale workshop with business and design training, that uses zero floral foam at a charming Vermont inn and all of your meals are included, then The Floralpreneur® Workshop is for you! To learn when doors are open CLICK HERE! I’m excited to share a short recap of our 2026 event thanks to Isora Lithgow Creations who was with us for the 4th year in a row to help capture the day.

We kicked things off for the Floralpreneur® Workshop with Color Theory Conversations and Elements and Principles of Design, followed by wearables and cake flowers with Lori Bley from The Hidden Daisy Floral. Designs feature locally grown tulips from von Trapp Flowers and all the colors of the rainbow are represented in the floral palette. Blue delphinium, purple hyacinth, magenta dianthus, red tulips, orange protea, yellow spray roses, and green hellebore were all in the lineup, just to name a few!

Every Floralpreneur® Workshop is foam free, so chicken wire, floral frogs and pin cups from Floral Genius were key to our mechanics.

For our group design project on Day 2, we decorated the entrance to The Inn at The Round Barn Farm and created colorful cake displays with delicious cakes from The Goose Chase Cake Design. All of the flowers in this grand entrance were repurposed and moved indoors for our final dinner in the barn, highlighting the ability to adapt or flip if needed.

We started to add greenery to our basic mechanics indoors, and then moved them outside to complete our set-up. Because everything is foam free, they are lightweight and easy to move. This was a group effort to complete the designs and everyone played a part to help make it come together. From moving crates of tulips, to climbing ladders and flowering the entire entrance, we pulled this off in about 45 minutes! In fact, we were all set to get a group photo before lunchtime.

For our overhead mechanics, tulips with bulbs still on were hung from wooden skewers in a simple chickenwire frame. We also featured tulips on one of our cakes with warm, analogous colors of yellow, orange, red and pink for a “tequila sunrise” vibe with a meadow of blooms in rainbow pin cup flower frogs. For our simple white cake we added a rainbow of blooms (none of which were touching the cake thanks to sculpting wire!).

After our cake photoshoot, we got back into business mode to talk about how to price installations, elaborate cake displays, or anything you haven’t made before, by using the EveryStem app! Our students are running small businesses, so the practical aspects of selling, client communication, and building your brand reputation are all important aspects that we cover in detail. Additional business sessions included Website Tips, Social Media Without Overwhelm, and 3 Keys To Booking Great Clients.

I want to say a big thank you to our sponsors for the workshop! Each of our students got to take home a pin frog, a hairpin frog, and a floral pin cup! They were really grateful for the additions to their foam free mechanics toolbox. They also left with a sleeve of recyclable vases from Flower Box and got to try an easy, magnetic boutonniere trick using Quick Clips Floral.

I want to also give a personal thanks to everyone at The Round Barn for taking such good care of us! And to my co-teacher, Lori, and my friend, Blair of Sweet Blossoms, for joining me (again!) for this special workshop. It’s such a pleasure to get to spend this time together doing what we do best!

Stay tuned for 2027 workshop dates and agenda! You can sign up to get on the notification list to learn when doors are open HERE!

By Alison Ellis

Wedding Bootcamp Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the Wedding Bootcamp recap! As I mentioned in my last post, hosting a Floralpreneur® Workshop with a commitment to foam free designs and a balance of business strategies has been a privilege and a proud accomplishment over the last 3 years! In all of the work we’ve done, not one piece of floral foam has been used. The reason for this is simple: if we can work more sustainably as floral designers, I believe we should!

I love learning and sharing new foam free techniques because it can truly be quite simple to reduce our environmental impact by cutting out single use plastics in our work. And when I can use the same simple mechanics in more than one way, I am really winning! Here you can see how we used the floral table runners above (from Part 1 of our Wedding Bootcamp recap) to create a foam free arbor design. We just placed the designs in boxes and marched them over to the arbor with a step stool and a few floral tools.

It was a beautiful spring day here in Vermont and we enjoyed the time outside to set everything up and enjoy the views of our work! We used Holly Chapple eggs, water tubes and bind wire to attach each arrangement to the arbor–so all of these mechanics could be reused if you want. Lori and I placed the first two pieces and then everyone jumped in to add a personal touch!

One of our reusable mechanics included these water tubes on bamboo skewers that I made in a workshop with Hitomi Gilliam several years ago. Sometimes the finer details on our mechanics can transform them into something that adds value to the design! As you can see below, another foam free flower design tip I share often is to mist your flowers with water. That’s why I gifted everyone with a 3-second mister to help encourage good flower hydration.

We’re a good looking group, aren’t we?! You can hardly tell that we’d been working hard for the last few days! (Although thanks to our wonderful hosts at The Round Barn we were eating quite well, too!)

In addition to the centerpiece designs and arbor decor that we made on Day 2 of our Wedding Bootcamp, our students created hand-tied bouquets, cascade bouquets, wearable flowers and floral crowns on Day 1, which Isora Lithgow Creations captured in the images below, too! Each student used their time to explore something they’d never made before or wanted to just experiment with. Every designer’s work is unique, though we did work with recipes and price out our designs.

A tremendous thanks again to all of our students and to my co-teacher, Lori Bley of The Hidden Daisy and her fantastic assistant designer, Kollin. We’re a great team and this was a truly special experience for everyone who attended!

A successful workshop requires so many tiny details coming together and it was an absolute pleasure to get to do this with you! I’m kicking around an agenda for 2026, so let’s plan to meet up again for another memorable floral gathering at The Round Barn. I’ll see you here!

xo. -Alison Ellis

See Part 1 of Wedding Bootcamp recap here.

By Alison Ellis

Wedding Bootcamp Part 1

This year’s Floralpreneur® Workshop was a Wedding Bootcamp at The Round Barn in Waitsfield, Vermont with instructors Lori Bley and Alison Ellis. This was my third year hosting floral design students for an intimate workshop at The Round Barn and once again, it was an absolutely incredible group and I can’t wait to do it again!

Isora Lithgow Creations was there (for the 3rd time!) to document our final day of the Wedding Bootcamp and here’s a little recap and glimpse behind the scenes at our students, their beautiful work, and the foam free designs we created together. I can’t fit all of the fun into one post, so make sure you follow the links in the post for Part 2 of the recap!

Our floral palette was a mix of lavenders, yellows, whites, pinks and blues, including roses, jasmine, delphinium, tweedia, and some phenomenal tulips from von Trapp Flowers, which just happens to be located a few minutes from The Round Barn. Our students absolutely loved the tulips as they got to select whatever colors they wanted to work with, and we made tulips a highlight for our decor for the Welcome Party, which was sponsored by EveryStem! Thanks, LuAnn!!

My Floralpreneur® Workshops always include a mix of practical business training and hands-on design work. After our morning discussion on pricing, recipes and a look at how I use the EveryStem app in my own floral business, Lori taught a demonstration on a foam free elevated centerpieces. Her mechanics, recipe, pricing and finishing touches were all revealed in detail so designers can feel confident in every aspect of this piece. Lori is generous with her knowledge and answered tons of questions as well!

We then moved onto my favorite mechanics for a foam free table runner that we also transformed into a design for a ceremony! I gave some brief instructions, gave our designers the recipe they had to work with and let them go for it! Check out Part 2 of the Wedding Bootcamp recap to see how we used the same mechanics two different ways.

Before our lunch break, each designer placed their foam free table runner piece on the table to see how it all comes together. And after lunch, we used the same pieces to create a completely different design for the ceremony arbor! You can check that out in Part 2 of the Wedding Bootcamp recap here.

I want to give a big thanks to all of our students as well as our sponsors and gift contributors! EveryStem, FlowerBox, Harmony Harvest, Floral Genius, and DV Flora! We appreciate your support!

See Part 2 of Wedding Bootcamp recap here.

By Alison Ellis

2024 Floralpreneur® Workshop

As a floral designer, I know there are a lot of options out there when it comes to workshops!

I’ve invested in more than a handful of professional workshops myself, so I want to share with you what sets The Floralpreneur® Workshop apart!

Click to watch below for a few reasons I think THIS IS THE BEST WORKSHOP FOR FLORISTS!

And sign up NOW if you want to ensure you get a seat.

It’s time to jump in and join us for this amazing workshop opportunity here in Vermont!

Get all the details here and sign up!

Remember: All Meals are Included, you get a 1:1 Coaching Call with Alison before the workshop, and you’ll walk away feeling confident that you can make ANY DESIGN foam free, yet secure!

I’d be honored to have you join us.

xo. -Alison Ellis

By Alison Ellis

Floral Designer Q&A

I received some great questions from florists in my Facebook group this month, and I’m going to address them in a LIVE Q&A Session on Wednesday, May 31st, at 11am Eastern/ 8am Pacific and I would LOVE to see you there!

Click here for a link to a replay of the live Floralpreneur® Q&A!

From how I leveraged local restaurant accounts and built my business on bud vases, to tips for pricing something you’ve never made before, to those the renewed requests for lily of the valley bouquets–I have a few questions on my list–but florists who join live can ask me anything!

We’re talking about what’s on your mind right now!

I hope you’re having a great day wherever you may be in the world and I’ll see you in the replay!

With love from me to you,

Alison Ellis