Faces Behind D8: Heather Condren - Flowerpop Inchicore

You’ve described Flowerpop as something that evolved almost by accident. Where did it really begin, and how did that first spark turn into a studio and shop in Dublin 8?

Well, it actually started out when, for my hen party, my friends organised a flower crown workshop and I absolutely loved it. That planted the seed. It was Kay’s Flower School who taught it, and they’re actually around the corner in Dublin 8 as well.

That same summer, Kay’s Flower School were celebrating thirty years and they ran a scholarship for someone to win a full training programme. I entered for the craic, and I didn’t realise a few other people had entered me as well, and I won. While I was training with them that October, I found out I was pregnant at the same time.

I started making wreaths at home in my tiny little place in Ringsend, pregnant, and driving around delivering them that Christmas. Then it went quiet for a while because it was Covid and baby life and all of that. But I kept saying to them, “I promise you didn’t waste that scholarship on me, I’ll do something cool with it.”

The real turning point was when we were looking for somewhere to rent. I found a house in Inchicore, and the day I signed the lease I thought, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are coming up, I’ll throw up a post and see is there anywhere I can work from. I stuck it on Twitter, and Lauren who owns DA Developments got in touch. She said she had a little shopfront on Emmet Road. I’d literally signed a lease on the house the day before, so I went down to see it, and that’s honestly how I landed both my life and my shop in Inchicore.

It was only meant to be temporary during Covid, but it just grew. I kept saying I was going to go and get a “real job”, but it stuck. And then I got the keys to the shop next door, and I found out I was pregnant that day as well. That was the moment where I was like, okay, this is a real business.

Now we’re in our new space in Inchicore with a long lease, and it finally feels like home.

What was the biggest challenge in moving from a passion project to running a professional floristry business, and what helped you make that leap with confidence?

Honestly, the biggest challenge was self-belief. I kept saying, “I need to go and get a real job.” I even applied to be a bus driver at one point.

I’m a real overthinker, and if something isn’t perfect, I won’t do it. If I had properly sat down and tried to plan a business from scratch, I don’t think I would have done it. I would have waited until I had the exact amount of money to run it for a year, until the packaging was perfect, until everything was perfect.

But because it happened in stages and it kind of snowballed accidentally, it became possible. Covid also meant I wasn’t going to get a job anytime soon, and I needed money, so I just kept going.

My husband was the one saying, “This is your real job.” He was like, “You have staff. This is it.” Even now, I still have to build confidence in myself. I’ll spend eight hours the night before putting together a proposal and mood board nobody asked for, just because I want people to see how good we are. The funny thing is, they’re booking us because they already know we’re good.

So yeah, confidence was the biggest challenge, and I’ve learned to manage it by being over-prepared. And when things lined up, like getting the next shop space the day I found out I was pregnant again, it really felt like it was meant to be.

Flowerpop stands out for its bold, colorful, and contemporary aesthetic. How would you describe your signature style, and where do you draw inspiration from, art, fashion, nature, or elsewhere?

We call our style “bold blooms”. We’re not traditional, and I love the idea that if someone is walking down the road with a Flowerpop bouquet, you can spot it.

We love pop art, bright colour, anything abstract. We play with space and flowers. We don’t really do the perfectly round bouquet. We like different levels, structure, height, and shape.

Inspiration comes from everywhere. Fashion is a big one. I love looking at what’s coming up colour-wise at Fashion Week, and we actually worked on Fashion Week last year, which was brilliant. Music is a huge one too. This Valentine’s Day we named our bouquets after love songs, which was really cute.

And the team are amazing. They’re all really creative, so they bring their own thing. They know the Flowerpop style, but I don’t babysit them. If it’s an event and the brief is lime and pink, I’m like, go for it.

I really don’t want this to be a shop where we’re just churning out the same bouquets every week with the same flowers. I want it to stay playful and intuitive.

You’ve spoken about purpose-led and sustainable floristry. What does that look like in practice at Flowerpop, and why is it so important to you?

A big part of it is trying to work more locally and seasonally when we can, and helping people understand what’s possible.

Last summer we started doing flowers from a local grower, Geraldine aka Dublin City Flower Farm, and now everyone asks for them. She picks them that morning and comes to us with them in a bucket. They last for ages because they’re so fresh, and people love having that connection to where they come from.

It also became much more personal to me after doing my dad’s funeral flowers. That was when I really understood how intimate flowers are. You see people at their happiest and their saddest. Flowers are celebration, but they’re also grief. They can be the last thing you do for someone you love.

For my dad, I made the wreath with spring bulbs because he loved planting. We all took the bulbs afterwards and planted them in our gardens. They bloomed last spring and they’re starting to show life again now, and it’s just really nice. That kind of changed how I think about sustainability, not as a trend, but as something meaningful.

How do you source your flowers seasonally, and what advice would you give someone wanting more eco-friendly floral choices in their home or events?

The biggest thing is demand. It’s less popular for people to buy Irish, but if people start asking for it during the summer months, the demand is there and suppliers respond.

My advice is to ask your florist what’s seasonal, ask what’s local, and be open to what’s available rather than trying to force a specific flower all year round.

Even starting small helps. Buy from local growers when you can. Or just ask for a bouquet that’s seasonal and Irish-grown, and let the florist make something beautiful with what’s in.

Flowerpop is now firmly rooted in Dublin 8. What has it been like opening and growing a creative business in the neighbourhood, and how has the local community shaped your experience so far?

I absolutely love Dublin 8. I moved into Dublin 8 when I was nineteen, so I’ve been here a long time. My son goes to school here. A lot of the team are local too. We tend to collect people from the area. One of the girls did work experience with us three years ago and now she works Fridays and Saturdays. Another did work experience last year and now she’s in with us on Saturdays.

The businesses around here are great. We do bits with Stillgarden and Rascals, and we work with Small Changes a lot. It feels really supportive.

When we came in, we wanted to bring more colour to the street. We painted the shop a bright blue and we were like, right, let’s challenge everyone to up their shopfront game. I always say I want to turn Emmet Road into the Kinsale of Dublin!

I had nightmares that the locals would set up petitions to make me paint it back. But they’ve loved it. Everyone, old men, young people, everyone, comes in saying they love the colour. We put up a “Love Loudly” sign the other day and a guy opened the door and shouted “I love you!” at us. It’s good craic.

Inchicore has such pride. It’s really salt-of-the-earth. There’s always something happening. The work in Richmond Barracks is amazing. Even the little things, like kids walking past from school all day. Sometimes we run out and say hello. Last year we gave two second-year classes a plant each and told them to bring them back at the end of the year and see whose was biggest. It’s just a lovely place to be.

You’ve worked on a wide range of projects, from intimate commissions to large-scale installations. Is there a project that stands out as especially memorable or challenging?

The most challenging one has to be suspending golden barley waves from the ceiling in Ashford Castle for a Guinness Storehouse writers’ conference.

They rang and said, “Can you do this?” and we were like, “Yes, yes we can.” Then we were like, we don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out.

We got in tonnes of barley and spray-painted it gold for a week. Then we had to figure out how to attach it to frames and make it into these waves. We ended up sewing it onto material and using thin copper wire to shape it.

The morning of the event, I was outside on Emmet Road welding at four in the morning. I went home, got into bed, got up at seven, packed the van, drove to Mayo, and installed it. At one point I honestly wanted to turn around and pretend the car broke down because I thought we couldn’t do it.

But we got it up, and it looked amazing in the photographs!

Memorable in a different way would be anything with the Guinness Storehouse. It’s where my dad worked, and his dad. My dad died two years ago this month, and working with Guinness makes me feel close to him. There’s even a photo of us in the Humans of Dublin exhibition and my dad’s photo is in the corner of mine, just peeking out. That’s there permanently, and it’s very special.

Social media has played a role in Flowerpop’s visibility, but how important has face-to-face community, neighbours, regular customers and nearby businesses been in building the business?

It’s huge. Most of the weddings we get are word of mouth. People have been to a wedding, they know someone, they’ve seen the work.

We’ve had couples come in where it starts with a bunch of flowers for a date, then the engagement, then the wedding, then babies. That has happened in four years, which is mad.

It’s a really intimate job. We always say we see people at their happiest and their saddest. One delivery is a birthday or an engagement. The next one is someone who has just lost someone.

We’re known to come out from behind the counter and be hugging people and crying with them. People come in for a chat. Mams come in with babies even if they’re not buying anything because they know they can come in if they’re feeling a bit lonely and we’ll chat for twenty minutes. We’re all naturally warm, over-sharing people in here, and I think people feel that.

Even at weddings, we’re pinning the groom’s flowers on, calming nerves, making sure the mother of the groom feels seen and looked after. And we always stay back until the bride goes up the aisle, we fix her dress before she goes out and tell her that she’s got this. It’s really meaningful work.

You’ve spoken openly about balancing motherhood, entrepreneurship, and creativity. How has your relationship to work shifted as Flowerpop has grown, particularly as you’ve moved from being an “accidental” florist to a more intentional one?

This year is my year to be more intentional. I’m working with a business coach, and the goal is sustainability. I’m not money-motivated at all. I’m not trying to grow this into some massive thing. I just don’t want to run myself into the ground. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I was back to work two weeks after having her by C-section. A lot of the work is weekend-based, and the kids are in childcare, so I don’t see them as much as I’d like. When I am with them, I’m really present, and they’re happy and loved. But I want better balance. I’m trying to leave my laptop here so I’m not bringing it home. I deleted my work email from my phone. It doesn’t always work, but I’m getting there.

We’re in our ‘forever home’ now, we have a ten-year lease, and we’re not going anywhere. I feel like I can breathe. Before, I always knew we’d outgrow the old space, and there was pressure. Now I can actually plan long-term, and let my team grow by giving them more responsibility too.

Coming from a background in social care before floristry, are there skills or perspectives from that work that still influence how you run Flowerpop or how you relate to clients and collaborators?

Absolutely. It’s a huge influence, and it’s something I want to grow this year. We already do some work experience with adults with intellectual disabilities. And we’ve started doing some work with Ruhama, a Dublin based NGO that works with women affected by prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation. We do workshops that are not about training people up or doing things “right”. It’s about getting out of your head and into your hands, switching off the brain, breathing, and having something calm to focus on. It’s basically therapeutic. I really miss that side of social care, so it’s lovely to be able to bring it into this work. And because we have the space now, I can actually plan it properly and say, right, we’re going to do something like that every Monday.

I also love the teaching side. I do workshops, and it lets me bring together flowers, social care, and the part of me that always wanted to teach. I have ADHD and perfectionism, so I still have that voice saying “I’m not good enough yet”, even though I probably am. But I’d love to grow the teaching side of the business over time.

Quick Fire Round

Most unusual floral request you’ve ever had?
Suspending gold-painted barley waves from the ceiling in Ashford Castle.

Dream Flowerpop installation, anywhere in the world?
I’d love to cover the GPO in flowers. Wrap the pillars. Take a historic Dublin building and just explode it with flowers.

One small Dublin 8 ritual or favourite moment?
Bringing the kids to Emmet Park, then walking down Emmet Road, popping into places like Small Changes, and just seeing all the shops. I love that we’re walking distance to Emmet Park, the Phoenix Park, and the War Memorial Gardens. The roses in June are unreal.

A flower or colour combo you’re obsessed with right now?
Matcha and cherry. That lime green with a deep cherry pinky-red. High contrast. I’m manifesting a lime-and-cherry wedding!

One piece of advice for turning a creative passion into a business?
Try to protect the creativity. Carve out time every week to make something just for the fun of it, not for the business. And also, you don’t have to monetise everything you love. If you’ve got a job that pays the bills and your hobby brings you joy, that’s a valid balance too.