Amanda Gephart is the founder of CH Florals, a flower business she started two years ago after deciding to follow her passion and become a florist. Credit: Courtesy of CH FloralsAmanda Gephart is many things: a mom, a PTO vice president, a Vermont transplant, a self-described “crafty hippie” and , as of two years ago, the founder and florist of CH Florals.Gephart runs her business in the gaps of her day, between family time and volunteer hours, operating the small flower studio out of her garage in Jeremy Ranch. A dated, black refrigerator (a Facebook Marketplace free find) on one side, a couple of folding tables, a row of mixed-matched vases and a few storage shelves make up CH Florals’ humble yet productive creative space. This is an off week — the only flowers to be seen are dried, but Gephart said she’s gearing up for her next assignment, a celebration of life.Right now, it’s a one-man-band, a passion project that started with a seed planted in young Gephart’s mind.“Weirdly, I’ve wanted to be a florist since junior high,” she said. “I had a friend whose parents owned a flower shop, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And like, how wonderful it would be to wear rubber boots every day and overalls and really get into it. But I never thought it would be like a real job.”Not quite in rubber boots, Gephart is dressed in colorful balloon pants and an oversized, puffy vest, and it’s not hard to guess where the “crafty hippie” in CH comes from.While Gephart wanted to be a florist since she was little — and at one point she took a floral arrangement online course for fun — her dream didn’t come true for a while.“We moved to California, then we moved here, and I had kids, and that just kind of went by the wayside,” she said. “Then I saw a sign outside Park City Gardens that said ‘Florists wanted,’ and my husband’s like, ‘You should go try it.’”Gephart said she applied with little hope, and basically no experience, but ended up working there for two years.“The owner there was awesome. She took me under her wing and taught me a bunch of stuff, and I had so much fun designing,” Gephart said.Two years ago, she decided to leave the gardens and try her own thing, starting small for friends in time for Mother’s Day and eventually building off word of mouth. Now, she does all the flowers for the annual Red Apple Gala fundraiser for the Park City Education Foundation and the weekly arrangements for Thomas Anthony Gallery on Main Street.She also started doing floral arrangement classes at Ecker Hill Middle School through a grant from the Park City Education Foundation, where students make a bouquet and give them to a teacher. Gephart said they’ve been such a hit that they’re looking to get another grant for next school year.“The joy of seeing someone when you give them flowers is just a happy feeling. I think (the students) liked that part of it. But they also liked arranging. They loved being in charge of it because no one was telling them where to put it, what to do. It was just their own creative freedom,” Gephart said.Inspiring those kids is one of the best parts of the job, Gephart said, but so is the ever-changing nature of floristry.“There’s so many different flowers, and there’s so many different things to create flowers for. You’d never get bored,” she said. “There’s always something else, a color palette that you’ve never tried. And I think that newness keeps me really interested.”On the business side, Gephart said her “Husband Package” is the most popular, an annual subscription of sorts which covers flowers for their spouse on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, their birthday and their anniversary, for a one-time price of $350.“My tag on that is, ‘I take care of dates, deliveries, you take all the credit,’” Gephart said.She also offers flower bars for events and workshops, procuring flowers from a distributor in Salt Lake City or ordering some directly from Ecuador. Some classes show people how to spruce up a grocery store bouquet, Gephart said, and this year she’s planning to do a workshop for prom-goers to make their own boutonnieres and corsages.With everything, Gephart said she’s committed to making CH Florals as sustainable as possible, thrifting her vases, composting flower scraps and even feeding leftover blooms to her bunny. A lot of that comes from her friendship with Anna Robertson, founder of The Cool Down, a web platform which posts news and tips for a cleaner future.“It just makes you stop and think about what we’re doing to the earth. Buying new vases isn’t really helping anybody, but using them over and over again is kind of great,” Gephart said. “I love that, because I can give the customer more flowers instead of charging them more for a vessel.”Gephart said her next busy season will be Easter, then Mother’s Day, and the best way to order an arrangement or to learn more is on her website, chflorals.com. She said she’s excited to see the business grow, maybe even enough to open a flower truck.The post Local ‘crafty hippie’ starts CH Florals out of her garage appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less