Florist has taken “God-given talent” to several homes
by C.F. David

Loretta Henderson touched a small branch with a glue gun and placed the bit of greenery in a brass sleigh.

“We have to get ready for the open house,” she smiled.

Henderson, a florist who now practices her art at Good News Books & Flowers, grew up in Springfield.

She recently moved from Lamar to work at the Boise City shop on East Main St.

She shrugged, “You always want to go home...I guess.”

Henderson learned her craft in Elkhart and took it with her as she moved to Midland, Texas, Cortez Durango, and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Henderson began her career in flowers in the 1970s at Elkhart.

“I lived in Elkhart, from 1970 to 74, that’s where my kids started school.”

“I went to work for Bob Harding in a flower shop he owned.”

Henderson tucked some more greenery into the sleigh and flicked a thread of glue from her fingers.

“Elkhart was a good place to live, there were a lot of nice, good people there,” Henderson recalled.

Asked how she knows where to put something in an arrangment, Henderson grinned, “What fits where. It’s one of those things that God gives you; either you have it, or you don’t.”

“This (flower arranging) is something I found I could do. I truly believe God gives each of us talents,” she smiled. “ And, I think once you intertwine decorating with art...well I also paint,” Henderson said.

>From Elkhart Henderson moved with her husband, a pipeline welder to Midland, Texas, arriving in time for the oil boom of the 1980s.

“It was a boom town then, it isn’t now.”

At Midland, Henderson first went to work arranging flowers for the city market, and then began her Wal-Mart floral career.

>From Midland she moved to the Durango-Cortez area of southwestern Colorado.

“I opened those stores,” Henderson said proudly.

“When I first began, I learned by working; then I took courses, like a week on weddings from Cliff Mann, in Colorado Springs,” Henderson explained.

Henderson also worked in hotels in Colorado Springs and taught in a local floral design school.

However, when she made her Wal-mart transfer to Lamar, she left her floral career behind because the Lamar store had no floral divison.

“I’ve been working in Wal-Mart in Lamar for a year, but they don’t have flowers.”

“I had to leave Cortez, the mountains, because of the altitude,” Henderson explained.

“I first came into this shop when I was visiting a friend. I just fell in love with it. Because I thought it was the prettiest shop I’d ever seen. She (Peggy Sparkman) has done wonders with it.”

“Each time I came back to visit my friend, I came back in here because it’s such a beautiful shop.

“Getting to work here, is a dream come true.”

“And, Peggy is such a nice person too,”

“I feel very blessed to be here.”