Flowers that last forever

HULL, I.A. (KELO) — From Valentine’s Day gifts to wedding bouquets, flowers can often hold a lot of memories. There’s one problem though — flowers wilt and die. But what if you could have flowers that never die? Or you could recreate a special bouquet from years ago?

On a farm just outside of Hull, Iowa, there sits a workshop and inside you’ll find shelves filled with flowers but the lady behind the desk isn’t your traditional florist.

“My flowers in the house always die. I cannot keep them alive,” Christiana Westra, owner of C Anna’s Things, said.

But that’s okay because these flowers can’t die. They are made out of wood.

The wood used to make the flowers comes from tapioca roots found in tropical climates. And they don’t feel like the wood many of us around here are used to, instead, they have an almost foam-like texture.

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“They look so realistic that people always say, ‘oh really, those aren’t real, they’re wood?’ So that’s fun too,” Westra said.

Christiana Westra first learned about non-traditional flowers like these when she was planning her own wedding.

“I was looking at real flowers and was like, wow they’re expensive and you don’t get a whole lot for them. I started looking into other options and ended up doing my own silk flowers back then and then after that I learned about wood flowers and was like, oh my, I have to get these and play with these,” Westra said.

She then started making wood flower bouquets for friends and family.

“And then we actually found out that the painting of the flowers was calming for our son who has special needs,” Westra said. “That’s when we started doing the business part.”

Seven years ago she started C Anna’s Things.

“Right now I’m just painting them. Taking them and painting them. I do a lot of custom work,” Westra said. “I would say probably 75 to 80 percent of my work is all custom.”

That includes wedding bouquets.

“I absolutely love them. They are so much better than the inspo picture,” bride-to-be Samantha Taylor said. “I love that she was able to take my three favorite flowers and turn them into a very cohesive bouquet.”

Samantha Taylor met Westra at the Sidewalks Art Festival in Sioux Falls this past summer and knew she wanted Westra to bring her wedding dreams to life.

“I was really trying to cut back on the money spending and this way it also lasts forever,” Taylor said. “You don’t have to try to preserve it in a special way.”

For Taylor, Westra helped create lasting memories. But she can also help bring back memories by recreating special bouquets from the past.

“I am highly sentimental so when somebody brings me something special that they’ve had or loved at their wedding or some other time in their life, that’s just really special to be able to recreate that memory for them and kind of bring it back to life,” Westra said. “We’ve shed tears together, customers and I have, because of just how special those kinds of things are for people.”

In the past, Westra has taken the tapioca wood and formed it into flowers herself but because of high demand and the busyness of her family’s farm, right now she is just getting them pre-made and then she customizes them. To see more of her work, you can stop into her workshop in Hull or check out her website.