Meet with Aurélien Guintoli, florist and enthusiast of stabilized flowers.

“With preserved plants, our creativity is limited only by our imagination”: this sentence describes quite precisely the arrangements made by our guest, Aurélien Guintoli, whose story with preserved plants started after an intervention of SecondFlor’s co-founder, Mikaël Nicolas. Today, he trains other florists to express themselves through floral art and tells us his story in this interview.

SecondNatur : Hello Aurélien, can you describe in a few key steps your career and your activity?

Aurélien Guintoli : I discovered the floral world at the age of 16 thanks to Fabienne Arnaudo (florist in Arles) who fought 6 months to help me get my C.A.P as a free candidate. My academic failure was bitter at that time… Despite everything, the flower quickly became exciting. C.A.P in my pocket I started the creation of a first shop that I kept for a year and a half. At 17 years old and without any experience, the adventure stopped right away.
For a few years I wandered from job to job, sometimes florist, sometimes waiter, beachman…. But the flower or rather the creation was always alive in me. All these trips from north to south, during these years, taught me to undertake life with panache. Floral experiences, especially in Marseille, have made me the florist I am…
At the age of 28, a crazy desire to create a place and a universe that resembles me came to life. On March 3, 2015 “Aurélien, artisan florist” was born; You know the rest …

SN : How did you discover stabilized flowers and plants?

AG : I met them 3 years ago in their current form, thanks to an intervention by Mikael Nicolas on social networks. Before that, I didn’t understand the point of working them. I always had this idea of the rose in her little glass square on her gravel bed (you know, the ugly thing we see everywhere?). My mind was pretty narrow so far. My vision really changed!

SN : What is your favourite stabilized plant? Why?

AG : I have no preference in stabilized plants. There are so many colours, shapes, textures, and varieties that it is difficult to make a choice! But my crush will always come back to the gardenias or the carnations or the Stephanese or the maple leaves or and / or and or again or… what a pain to make a choice, everything is beautiful!

SN : What do you like most about working with stabilized plants?

AG : What I like? To be able to model my artistic desires like a painter with his painting tubes… We only sell ephemeral, which is by essence our job. However, like the painter, with stabilized plants we can express our artistic sensitivity in a perennial way. How nice to hear from my clients:”- Your composition is always beautiful, it hasn’t moved!” which never happens with fresh.

SN : What advice would you give to those who want to start in stabilized plants?

AG : To assimilate that with stabilized flowers, our imagination is the only limit to creativity. This is what I recommend in my courses “Stabilized, a new story”. I must admit that often on the first day of the course, the trainees are quite reluctant to understand that the stabilized becomes a material that is sublimated by the florist. From the second day, in general, the florist perceives the stabilized as an infinite well of creativity; it is at this moment when I shout: VICTORY!