Tawni Janvrin created Petal Kindness as a way to give flowers a second life. (Image: Petal Kindness)

One and done is often the life of a floral arrangement. This is because after a wedding or some other event flowers wind up in the trash.

It doesn’t have to be that way thanks to Tawni Janvrin, executive director of Petal Kindness.

The South Lake Tahoe nonprofit that started in May 2024 is all about taking floral arrangements from one event and repurposing them for another.

“In the event industry unfortunately there is a lot of waste in food, décor,  plastics and floral,” Janvrin said. “The lowest hanging thing to tackle is the flowers.”

Janvrin is in the event planning business, having owned Pomegranate Occasions in South Lake Tahoe since 2011. This makes her well qualified to assess what is going on in this industry and to help it become more sustainable.

For about a decade before launching Petal Kindness the idea of giving flowers a second life was percolating in Janvrin’s creative mind. Finally, she pulled the trigger.

Before launching the service she spoke to local florists because the last thing she wants to do is cut into their profits.

“Create with T and Twine Floral Co. are the two predominate South Lake Tahoe florists. Both are very kind and community driven,” Janvrin said. “I knew if I could get those two to understand and have their support, the rest would kind of follow.”

After an event the arrangements are far from their peak so it’s not like they are representative of the work professional florists do.

Timing is everything to bring a second life to flowers. Ideally, Petal Kindness knows of an event like a wedding a couple weeks in advance, then works with entities like Barton Health, schools and nonprofits to see who might need or want flowers.

“We donated a lot to what was Live Violence Free. What we heard from their clients is ‘it brightened my day’ and ‘this is the first time I had ever gotten flowers’,” Janvrin said.

At the start of the school year Petal Kindness took a large donation of flowers to South Tahoe High School during a staff kickoff event.

Flowers that will get a second life fill the backseat of a vehicle. (Image: Petal Kindness)

“We set up a flower bar at that event. We got fabulous feedback. All the teachers could make arrangement for their classroom,” Janvrin said.

It was the August memorial for 13-year-old Giada Lancellotti that proved to Janvrin her idea was bringing joy even when the event was far from joyful.

“It was probably the highlight of the year; to think of the power that this organization can be,” Janvrin said. “We got seven different hosts to donate flowers. That place was drowning in flowers as it should be for a celebration of life. A whole host of volunteers made that happen. They did some beautiful work.”

Petal Kindness has forms on its website (https://www.petalkindness.org/) for donors and recipients to help facilitate the matching process, as well as a link for potential volunteers. No promises are made to recipients because the quality, color, quantity or even type of flowers are not known until they are retrieved.

Petal Kindness reps cannot just go around picking up flowers on a whim. It’s a process. The event host owns the flowers, so their permission is needed to do anything with them.

Vases must to be left behind because florists own and reuse them.

“Part of the challenge is the late-night pickups,” Janvrin said. “We are always looking for volunteers. Some of our overhead is having to pay people. We need professionalism with volunteers. They could be walking into a wedding.”

The event host is asked to donate to Petal Kindness to offset the cost of retrieval.

Volunteers have buckets in their vehicles to put the flowers in. They are then often immediately dropped off with the prearranged recipient for them to make bouquets or arrangements as they like.

With most events during the summer, Petal Kindness operates May-October.

For more information, email PetalKindness@gmail.com.

Note: A version of this story first appeared in the Tahoe Mountain News.