The Sydney Flower Markets

My lovely friend Esther has had a bee in her bonnet for a while about going to see the Sydney Flower Markets. I've read a couple articles about them too, but given that you have to get there around 5 AM, I assumed that I would never find someone to go with me. But lucky for me, Esther got interested in going, promised me that she would wake up at 4:30, and so we set out last Saturday to go on a flower market adventure!

Leaving the house at 4:15 by myself in the dark felt weird, but once I got to the car I'd booked, driving through the city has never been easier! =) 

The Flower Markets are out in a suburb on the western side of Sydney. At 5 in the morning, it just took us 20 minutes to get there from the center of the city. 

The markets are primarily a wholesaler for a florists and the like, but they do allow the general public. However, the whole setup is clearly designed for people know know what they're doing (not us!) so there's not a ton of signage in the parking areas. We focused on avoiding the delivery trucks and forklifts, and got through the parking lot as fast as we could!

We didn't end up quite in the right place, so we stumbled onto the Produce Market. The amount of people rushing around was really intimidating. However, luck was with us, because not only did we find a little cafe serving coffee, the nice lady there also told how to get out of that chaos and over to the building where the flowers were!

The flower market building was still full-on, but much smaller and less frantic than the produce markets. 

It was a warehouse full of different growers and sellers. Lots of the sellers had a wide variety of flowers, but some focused on just native flowers, or orchids, or roses, or just greenery. 

Interestingly, there were a few parties there who were buying flowers for their events. We saw bridal parties and some other groups who were out for specific things. 

One of the orchid-specific shops

We were just there to browse, though, so we took our time and checked out all the sellers. The sellers seemed to pretty much be focused on dealing with their regular customers, and it wasn't always clear who "owned" one of the patches of flowers. But we figured out that if we picked up some flowers and held some cash in our hand, someone would appear to take it from us!

Of course, one of the big appeals of going the to the market is the price. It was pretty interesting to see the markup that happens in just one step of the delivery chain. The flowers were significantly cheaper than I can buy them from a stall in the train station or at the Saturday markets. But of course, I'm paying for someone to get up at 4:30 on a Saturday to get them to the market, which is a cost I'm happy to pay for! =)

One of the other cool things about the market was seeing the amazing flowers that are a bit rarer, ones I've never seen in shops around the city. This one was one of my favorites: the buds were so geometrically square, it was incredible. 

And some of the flowers were amazing just because of their size - like this one, which was the size of Esther's head. $15 for a flower the size of your head! What a deal, if you have a vase that can hold it and a saw to cut it! 

 

The people that were there in earnest knew the system. They would come with their carts, pick up the flowers they wanted, and then lay them out on a table, grouped by price. Then the seller would magically appear and calculate up the cost. It was quite a system. 

It's a bit hard to describe the overall atmosphere that made the flower markets so fun. It's pretty incredible to just be standing surrounded by all these amazing flowers, many of which I've never seen before or only ever seen in Australia. The industry that make the wheels of the florist business turn is fascinating to see first-hand. 

And needless to say, we did buy a few flowers! There were so many cool flowers, we had to constantly remind ourselves of the number of vases we had at home (not many!) and try to keep it under control. 

OK, so maybe we ended up with a *few* more than we had vases for! That just meant we had to get creative! =)

Maybe next time we'll get brave and do the produce market!