Wild child
For florist Bess Scott, working with native Australian flowers is more than a passion, it’s an inheritance. She is the fifth generation to make her mark on the flower industry, a legacy seeded by her paternal great-great grandfather who sold wildflowers at Sutherland train station in the 1920s.
Growing up on her family flower farm at Mangrove Mountain on the Central Coast, Scott’s childhood reads like a novel — making obstacle courses in the paddocks, swimming in the dam, going to the shed to watch her family bunch up flowers for sale and falling asleep in a flower box at the Sydney Flower Market.
“I remember that so clearly,” Scott laughs. “Going to the markets with my dad and grandpa was a real highlight growing up. Even today, I love being in the bustle of the markets in the morning. A lot of the growers have known me since I was that baby in the flower box so it’s like a second home.”
It’s hard to believe that floristry wasn’t on Scott’s agenda when she finished school. Instead, she chose to study fine arts but continued working part-time with florists around Sydney, including Saskia Havekes from Grandiflora in Potts Point, who showed her how art and flowers could go hand in hand.
“I didn’t think I would ever have a flower shop,” Scott says. “I wanted to work with my painting and sculpture, and I moved to London for about four years.”
She was a world away from her family farm, but the flowers kept calling her back. After working with some of the UK’s top florists while doing her art on the side, Scott was ready to branch out on her own when her family told her that the tenants had moved out of the shop they owned on William St, Paddington. Taking a leap of faith, she moved back to Australia and opened the doors to BESS on the weekend of the William Street Festival in 2018.
“It’s really nice to be in Paddington. I recently discovered my great grandmother, Veronica, opened her first florist shop in Bondi where she sold flowers from her farm in Sutherland, so it’s all quite local,” Scott muses.
Like her great granddaughter, Veronica grew up with a father in the flower business and continued that legacy, but on her own terms. “Veronica was a real inspiration for my grandpa and dad,” Scott says. “I guess you could say she was a bit of a trailblazer.”
Trailblazing runs in the family. Scott’s grandfather and father were pioneers in growing and selling native flowers. In 2000, they were commissioned to make the medal-winner bouquets for the Paralympic Games.
“It took a while for them to start growing commercially,” she says. “Dad is now one of the bigger Australian native flower growers in the country, but it took time for florists and their customers to get on board.”
Scott is proud to use her family’s flowers in her shop, though she says there are still customers who are hesitant to choose native varieties.
“People come in and say they don’t like native flowers. They have in their mind that it's a cut and dried banksia stem. They are always surprised to find that there's a big range of amazing, beautiful, colourful and vibrant native flowers.”
One of Scott’s favourites is pink flannel flowers, a delicate, soft, woolly wildflower that her father grows on his farm. “People would recognise them from after the bushfires when they flowered all over the Blue Mountains,” she says. “Their seeds can lie dormant until there’s a fire, so some of them hadn’t flowered in 50 years.”
If there’s one part of the family business that’s stood the test of time, it’s the sustainability of a local product. “We don't sell any imported flowers in the shop,” Scott says. “There are so many beautiful things on our doorstep that you don't need to go far to find really special varieties.”
In the relatively short space of six years, BESS has established itself as a Paddington institution. And though Scott can’t imagine her life any other way, one thing she is reimagining is the retail space. After months of renovations, the doors of her original site on William St are scheduled to reopen in mid-June.
“We’ve had plans to renovate since we opened, so we’ve had a lot of time to think about how to make it more functional. It will be a much more open space that will allow people to walk to the back of the shop and see us working. They can watch the magic happen.”
The space may even be available to hire for events and dinner parties, an idea prompted by Scott’s impromptu pizza nights with her staff after work. “We’d set up some tables in the middle of the old shop, surrounded by all the flowers and it was just amazing. I’d love to let other people experience that.”
This next chapter will also give Scott an opportunity to combine her passions for floristry and art, and to collaborate with other artists and sculptors. She’s always exploring new ways to share her enthusiasm for Australian flowers and to engage with the Paddington community. Her position as a neighbourhood florist is one that she never takes for granted.
“I love being part of this community,” she says. “People here really support local businesses. All the shops bounce off each other. Our big focus moving forward is to be as creative and experimental as possible.”
It’s safe to say that the wildflowers will continue to bloom on William St and Scott’s family legacy looks set to thrive for many seasons to come.
BESS
27 William St