Denise Porcaro of Flower Girl

We get asked all the time about simple space sprucing solutions. Our answer? A feminine floral arrangement. In any given hood you can find like five average florist shops with a predictable assortment of flowers. But in the Lower East Side on Eldridge Street (right by Chrissie Miller’s pad) is Flower Girl, a magical space stocked with the prettiest variety of colorful and well-curated botanicals.

“We are super excited to have our own four walls and have it just be ours,” owner and founder, Denise Porcaro, gushed to us. Prior to the opening, Flower Girl shared a space with Earnest Sewn on Orchard Street.

The space is sprinkled with bits of unexpected charm and character (think dried roses, unusual vases and terrariums). We popped by Flower Girl’s new flagship space on none other than Valentine’s Day—could we have picked a worse time?—to chat with the brains behind the operation: the Flower Girl herself, Denise Porcaro. With her tiny Chihuahuas in tow, we chatted about everything from how she got her start to the secret to keeping those damn flowers alive longer than two days. (We admit we don’t have the, uh, greenest thumb, but we’re learning!)

Porcaro’s unplanned foray in floristry is what really surprised us. “[Before Flower Girl] I worked in the restaurant business, because I went to school for film and production design. I was doing flowers for the restaurants that I worked for and one thing led to another, and I started to do huge arrangements, which led me to like the market and became interested to see what was out there,” she told us. “I think if you have a creative eye and a creative feel, you can kind of apply it to whatever it is. If you are creative then I think it just transpires across the board.”

We’ve seen our fair share of beautiful flower arrangements (Mia Moretti, Jenni Kayne, Emily Current, Monique Lhuillier, Marina Larroudé et al.), but when it comes to keeping your flowers alive, Porcaro suggests this: “The best location to keep them is out of direct heat or air for one; definitely not in direct sun for another.” And when it comes to changing the water? “Do it every other day. If you listen to Martha Stewart, she says every day and cut it. I say every other, and that is totally sufficient!”  

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