Coffee with Azalea Flowers

We first connected with Azalea Flowers in 2017 when we opened our South Melbourne shop, just across the street from them.

The lovely Azalea team started popping in for their daily coffee, and soon began brightening our shop space with their incredible, native Australian blooms. Since then, our relationship has deepened and evolved, and Azalea now supplies stunning seasonal bouquets to all our shop locations.

This weekend (10–11 May 2025), we’ll be selling gorgeous bunches of Azalea blooms at our Sydney Rd (Brunswick) and Faraday St (Carlton) shops, just in time for Mother’s Day!

On a recent visit with the Azalea Flowers team, we chatted about the values that drive their business, the busiest time of year on their calendar, and the important role coffee plays in the day-to-day life of a florist!

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Can you tell us a bit about Azalea Flowers?

Azalea is a florist located on the Coventry St side of the South Melbourne Market specialising in Australian native flowers and all things seasonal. We opened in 2014, and celebrated ten years last year.

What are the values that underpin what you do at Azalea?

Our main aim is to inspire people though nature. We love having something different in our shop each week that makes people feel a sense of wonder. If customers are coming in, staring deeply into the flowers and saying WOW! that’s our mission completed.

We are also acutely conscious that we need to do all this in a way that is low impact. Our preference for sourcing locally grown native flowers is a big part of how we achieve this. Also anything that can be reused is. 

“Our main aim is to inspire people though nature. We love having something different in our shop each week that makes people feel a sense of wonder.”

We love being your neighbours on Coventry St! What drew you to making this area your base?

South Melbourne is such a great suburb, the market is unlike any other in Melbourne and it’s a great place to have our shop. It’s basically a suburb on the fringe of the CBD, so it’s always busy and there is always something going on, but it also has an incredible community of locals who shop with us every week.

What’s your busiest season/time of year at Azalea? 

Mother’s Day week is the busiest week of the year. People always assume it’s Valentine’s Day but, for us, Mother’s Day eclipses Valentine’s Day. Christmas and Easter periods are also really busy with people decorating their homes for family get-togethers. It helps being at the market as people do their food shopping and come to us at the end for flowers.

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Can you tell us a bit about Azalea founder Michael’s farm and its relationship to your business?

Sandy Hill is a small acreage farm on an undulating sand rise close to the Murray River. It was started in the 80s by a Banksia collector and is more like a big garden than a commercial farm. We have lots of varieties of Banksia that are rare or hard to grow and not often seen in flower shops. It’s one of the most exciting parts of what we do because, in a lot of instances, we’re showing our customers flowers that they haven’t seen before.

What role does coffee play at your shop? 

Coffee is very important to florists!! We start very early so the first coffee run of the day is a religious ritual.

There is definitely a relationship between coffee and flowers in that they’re both treats for the senses that bring you back into the moment. We are also both encouraging our customers to try what has just come into season and is at its best that week. 

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Coffee with Azalea Flowers

We first connected with Azalea Flowers in 2017 when we opened our South Melbourne shop, just across the street from them.

Can you tell us a bit about Azalea Flowers?

What are the values that underpin what you do at Azalea?

“Our main aim is to inspire people though nature. We love having something different in our shop each week that makes people feel a sense of wonder.”

We love being your neighbours on Coventry St! What drew you to making this area your base?

What’s your busiest season/time of year at Azalea?

Can you tell us a bit about Azalea founder Michael’s farm and its relationship to your business?

What role does coffee play at your shop?

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What’s your busiest season/time of year at Azalea? 

What role does coffee play at your shop? 