Why more people are buying flowers for everyday therapy

Once upon a time, you went to a florist for a bouquet. Now you can grab one next to the spinach, at the pharmacy counter, even by the chips at a gas station. As fresh flowers have spilled out of specialty shops and into everyday retail, their place in our lives – and who’s buying them – has changed fast.

Researchers at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences wanted to know what, exactly, is going on. They teamed up across horticulture and agricultural economics to look not just at what people buy, but why they buy it, how often, and what those habits reveal about the modern consumer.

Flowers move beyond florists

Drawing on a nationally representative survey of more than 8,500 people, the team found remarkable variety rather than a single archetype. Using marketing-style cluster analysis, they identified 13 distinct kinds of flower buyers.

Some are the classic date-night crowd: heavy on roses, big on Valentine’s Day. Others show up once a year for anniversaries and otherwise keep their wallets shut.

A growing slice is buying flowers solely for themselves – home-use-only shoppers who treat stems like candles or throw pillows, a mood boost for the living room. And then there’s the “everything” group: people who purchase for all kinds of occasions and tend to spend the most overall.

Ask people what flowers mean and the responses span the spectrum. Word clouds from open-ended answers lit up with “beauty” and “smell,” but also “expensive” and “waste.”

Even so, buyers describe tangible upsides. Those who’d purchased flowers in the past year were more likely to report feeling better at home and at work – improved mood, less stress, higher morale. The effect was strongest among recent purchasers.

As agricultural economist Ben Campbell put it, “there’s a perceived benefit of buying flowers – whether it’s real or not. People feel they’re getting something valuable from the experience.”

Covid changed how we buy flowers

Behind the scenes, the cut-flower supply chain is both global and intricate. Imports – especially roses from Colombia – still dominate U.S. shelves. But the domestic picture has shifted in surprising ways.

When COVID-19 hit, weddings and funerals vanished overnight. Growers plowed under fields. Florists closed their doors. And then, stuck at home, people started buying flowers anyway – to brighten kitchen tables and Zoom backgrounds, to mark time when weeks blurred together. Grocery stores and even convenience stores leaned into the demand.

“It became almost like therapy,” said Julie Campbell, the study’s lead author and a horticulture professor. “The habit stuck around.”

That collective turn inward sparked new growth outdoors. From 2017 to 2022, open-field flower acreage in the U.S. more than doubled. Much of that expansion came from small and mid-sized farms growing stems that don’t ship well – zinnias, dahlias, snapdragons – varieties that explode with color but wilt on long-haul flights.

Rather than compete with mass-produced roses from the Andes, these growers staked out a complementary niche: seasonal, local, and often more diverse.

Local farms find their niche

Today’s bouquets are often a collage of origins. One sleeve might hold Ecuadorian roses, California ranunculus, and Georgia-grown wildflowers, all in the same mix.

Consumers seem comfortable with that blend, and many are learning to read seasonality the way they do with produce: peonies in late spring, sunflowers in midsummer, chrysanthemums in fall.

For domestic growers, that seasonality is an advantage. It allows them to sell what travels poorly and tell a fresher story – field to vase instead of farm to table. For retailers, it’s an opportunity to meet shoppers where they already are.

The UGA study suggests that people inclined to toss a bouquet in the cart also value other small home upgrades. In other words, flowers are converging with the broader “home as haven” mindset that accelerated during the pandemic and never really retreated.

Flowers are no longer just gifts

If there’s one throughline in the data, it’s diversity of intent. Flowers are still gifts, of course, but self-purchase is no longer niche.

The “everything” buyers – those who grab stems for birthdays, apologies, Tuesdays, and everything in between – anchor the market, yet the once-a-year romantics and the treat-yourself crowd matter too.

That mix is why bouquets now show up in so many retail formats. A pharmacy endcap might catch the anniversary buyer; a grocery display might tempt the self-care shopper who wants tulips with their tomatoes.

It also helps explain the emotional payoffs respondents described. Fresh flowers are a fast, visible change in a room and an affordable luxury compared to furniture or renovations. That hit of beauty, scent, and novelty can feel outsize relative to the spend, which reinforces repeat purchases.

Where the industry goes next

Policy and logistics will continue to shape the landscape – trade agreements, air freight costs, and climate impacts all ripple into what appears in the bucket by the checkout. But the UGA team’s work points to a few practical implications now.

Retailers can segment more intelligently, tailoring assortments and messaging to different buyer types rather than assuming a single use case.

Growers can lean into their strengths – distinctive, local, and seasonal – without trying to displace imports that excel at year-round volume. And marketers can speak to well-being without overpromising: flowers won’t solve life’s problems, but they routinely make spaces feel better, and people notice.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the simplest: Americans are still buying flowers – and not just to hand to someone else.

Whether it’s a dozen roses flown in from Colombia or a handful of dahlias clipped from a nearby farm, fresh stems have become an everyday indulgence. They sit by the sink, brighten a desk, bookend the produce aisle, and remind us, in small ways, why bringing a bit of the outside in still resonates.

The study is published in the journal HortTechnology.

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