In full bloom

Jane Anderson gets the latest floral updates from Seraina Serrat, founder of pioneering Zurich flower shop, Floral Lokal

I don’t know about you, but when I have a beautiful vase of flowers in my house, it lifts my spirits. The power of flowers and plants to evoke joy is well documented in everything from Western love poetry to sacred jasmin offerings in Indonesia. Zurich-based Floral Lokal flower shop founded by Seraina Serrat is testament to this. 

photo by Floral Lokal

Seraina started creating floral displays at the restaurant she worked at, and after that found a part-time job at Blumenpost, a sustainable online flower shop, before setting up her own market stall in Zurich Wiedikon. Learning on the job, she branched out alone and opened Floral Lokal, now with outlets in Zurich’s Lochergut and Wiedikon districts, plus a new shop at Schaffauserstrasse next to Kafi Freud (kafifreud.ch). And if you’d like an ice cream while you choose your flowers, you’re in luck as Gelateria Milchbuck (gelati1998.ch) shares the shop space. As Seraina says modestly, ‘It all happened supernaturally. One thing after another just came to me.” 

Part of Floral Lokal’s green spirit comes from its efforts to uphold slow flower standards where possible. As Seraina explains, “Slow flowers are locally grown flowers free from pesticides and poison. We have several small flower farmers who supply us directly. But we could never work exclusively with slow flowers because we need a much larger quantity of blooms. But we make sure we source flowers from local producers in Switzerland and Northern Italy during the whole year.” 

photo by Floral Lokal

Current trends in the flower world include less green and more colour blocking, according to Seraina. “At the moment we love placing orange and soft pink tones together. Overall, I see a lot of very light tones combined with super dark, almost black colours.” 

‘My favourite flowers always change with the season and mood,” says Seraina. “Currently I love butterfly ranunculus, spider gerberas and mini lilies.” 

photo by Floral Lokal

“People think I’m very eccentric or nostalgic or romantic, but I’m not,” Doc insists. “I really believe in the chance to build technologies as a combination of analogue and digital. It’s time to merge these two technologies and come up with new solutions.” 

floral-lokal.ch

instagram.com/florallokal/