Article Written By: Andrea Smith

The Wareham Observer – 10/5/2007

 

Rochester’s Bunny Mogilnicki is having a hopping good time in a world surrounded by flowers.
She owns Bunny’s Bouquets in Rochester. You could say she loves her work.
“I’ve just always wanted to be a florist,” she said. “To me, I’m living a dream. I’ve wanted to be a florist for a long, long time.”
    Reverence, soft as a flower’s petal, drifted into Bunny’s voice as she continued.
    “To me, flowers are love transferred from one person to another,” she said. “I think flowers are beautiful. I think each flower is a miracle to itself.”
    For years Bunny and her husband Bob saw flowers all over the world. They were assigned to the Department of Defense Dependent Schools. Bunny taught science and English to junior high school students in Germany, Turkey, Italy, and Korea. Teaching junior high students and living overseas taught Bunny one of life’s greatest lessons - flexibility.
    Five and a half years ago, with travel in their past, Bunny and Bob looked for a place to call home and found Rochester. Bunny added two refrigerators to her basement, gathered flowers, turned to lessons learned while studying for her horticulture degree and brought her dream into focus.
    “I’m the thinking florist,” she said with a laugh. “I’m always thinking about flowers.”
    All that Bunny has to do is look at a person, even a total stranger, and she starts seeing the colors they wear and the personalities they reflect and then she mentally designs the flower arrangements that she thinks they would enjoy.
    Living in a small and close-knit community gives Bunny an advantage that florists in larger towns do not have.
    “I know most of the people I’m delivering flowers to and arranging flowers for, so I try to keep them in mind and then I think about what they would like, bold colors, or something very feminine, and then I just start arranging,” she said. “My arrangements are like gourmet arrangements. They’re unusual, individual, and personalized.”
    Bunny often adds accents to her arrangements. Sometimes the accents are seasonal, such as gourds, tiny ducks or geese. Sometimes they are celebratory and range from chocolate for birthdays to delicate gold birds for a 50th wedding anniversary.
    Bunny’s unique arrangements often bring compliments and wishes that the arrangement could last forever.
    “It’s not unusual for me to be asked to reproduce an arrangement that I’ve done using permanent botanicals so that the recipient can enjoy it forever,” Bunny said.
    Most of the time Bunny arranges flowers for happy occasions, but work has its sad moments too. Funerals have always tugged at Bunny’s heart, but they’ve tugged even more recently. Bunny’s mother passed away just a year ago. She understands the tears and exhaustion that surround a funeral, and she reaches out to families who have lost loved ones, visiting them in their home, talking with them, forming a picture in her heart, of the love and life her arrangements should reflect.
    Bunny’s Bouquets delivers flowers to Rochester addresses for a $5 delivery fee, contiguous towns surrounding Rochester for $7.50, and to Fairhaven and New Bedford for $10.
    Bunny is available for floral consultations at 508-763-0088.