US Florists 15+ Years Trained in European Systems - Book Research

Most serious practitioners in American floristry carry something they can't quite name. It isn't frustration with commodity competition or wire service practices, though both are real. It's something older and more structural — the particular experience of carrying deep, hard-won professional expertise in a field that lacks the infrastructure to acknowledge what its most serious practitioners know. I'm calling it professional loneliness. Not the loneliness of isolation from colleagues, but something more fundamental: belonging to a profession that has no mechanism to hold what you carry. I'm writing a book about this — working title The Florist's Grief — and I'm conducting original research through conversations with long-tenured practitioners. I'm looking for: — Practitioners with 15 or more years in serious professional floristry — Particularly: practitioners who trained in European formation systems — German Ausbildung/Floristmeister, Dutch, Belgian, or similar pathways Participation is a recorded conversation of about an hour. Attribution is discussed before we begin. If something in this resonates — even if you're not sure you have anything useful to say — I'd like to talk. Full project description: https://lnkd.in/e4Az9v5y [email redacted] James Dempsey AIFD, CFD Founder, FloristFacts.org | Owner, Studio Herbage Florist