Credit: Elyssa Grillo

In a tiny building off of Post Road in Wayland, Jolene Palumbo runs her own flower shop dedicated to making floral arrangements and bouquets for Wayland residents, or anyone who comes by her small business. “It can be really busy at times,” Palumbo said. “The phone will be ringing and many people will be coming in while other days are pretty quiet, so I can do extra things like cleaning and getting ready for the next day.”

Post Road Flowers, located on 310 Boston Post Road in Wayland, is a woman-owned floral business. The shop opened in 2016 by Jolene Palumbo, who has been working in the floral industry for most of her life.

Palumbo started her florist career on Nantucket Island over two decades ago. When she moved back to the mainland, she worked for Whole Foods Market in Wayland Village in the florist section until the Whole Foods Market moved locations in 2016. Her previous workplace was just across from where her shop is now, on the other side of Route 20.

“I often saw this place right across the street, and had my eye on it for a while,” Palumbo said. “The landlord accepted my offer, the town allowed me to open a flower shop here and the rest is history.”

Post Road Flowers is Palumbo’s first small business of this nature. She used to have a seasonal business, but has found that running this floral business full-time and mostly on her own presents a different set of challenges.

“It was very hard to start my floral business since there was so much I didn’t know when going into it,” Palumbo said. “Everything about owning a small business, like the legalities, is a very difficult endeavor. Starting up needed a lot of perseverance, hard work and good credit.”

Although spearheaded by Palumbo, several other people contribute to the business. Palumbo sources her flowers from a master supplier that often provides local products during the spring and summer. During the fall and winter, flowers could be sent to Post Road Flowers from places as far as South America or Japan. As for her staff, Palumbo has a designer who works on Mondays and Tuesdays and a secretary who answers phone calls on Thursdays and Fridays.

“I do the arrangements all by myself, so I am looking for more hands to help us out with making boxwood trees and stuff like that,” Palumbo said. “There are people who want to work unprofessional jobs, for example high schoolers who have worked here before, but the hours often don’t work out since we close pretty early.”

Palumbo starts her day as early as possible to maximize working productivity. As soon as she arrives at the store, she begins completing various tasks for the day. This includes making bouquets, cleaning the shop, answering the phone and handling walk-in customers. Around 12:30 p.m., the delivery driver arrives to pick up any delivery orders. In the afternoon, she begins her orders for the next day until she packs up to leave a little after 4 p.m..

“It can be really busy at times,” Palumbo said. “The phone will be ringing and many people will be coming in while other days are pretty quiet, so I can do extra things like cleaning and getting ready for the next day.”

Post Road Flowers has a website that customers can order flowers from whether they live in Wayland or any other part of the world.

“[My business] is all the internet and the telephone, really,” Palumbo said. “Local people mostly call, we only get walk-ins if they need something right away. We get orders from California through the web a lot, and, actually, the farthest order came from Saudi Arabia.”

In Palumbo’s shop, there is a display of flowers around the room as well as small decorations to accentuate the garden theme, such as distressed furniture and a bird bath wall detail. For her walk-ins, Palumbo has bouquets encased in clear-door refrigerators to keep them fresh, however, at the beginning, the shop wasn’t as composed.

“This business is all about being prepared, and I learned that the hard way my first years where we weren’t as ready as I would have liked when people came in,” Palumbo said. “I’ve learned that it’s hard to satisfy all the orders that are coming in through while having people come in too, so [this business] definitely [relies on] balance.”

Being the sole owner of Post Road Flowers provides Palumbo with freedom, as well as some restrictiveness in other aspects of her life.

“While relying on myself can be hard because I always have to prioritize [Post Road Flowers] over everything else in my life, having it all to myself is also the best part,” Palumbo said. “I love to be able to do my own thing, like creating designs and interacting with people all on my own.”