On the Job: Creating Beauty With Beauty

Just over a year ago, Myung Lee was looking for somebody to help her at , a shop she’s owned for more than 20 years on Santee’s Mission Gorge Road.

Because Lee was dealing with a serious health issue, she needed someone she could rely on completely.

When Lee met Cindy Birchard, both women knew they’d found what they were looking for.

“She said I was the answer to her prayers,” says Birchard, 54, a master floral designer with more than 40 years in the business who is now Candlelight’s manager.

“She’s been great,” says Lee, who also has three other employees. “I’m fighting breast cancer, so I needed someone I could rely on, who has a lot of experience.”

Birchard and Lee now work side by side in the back of the shop, creating floral arrangements of every kind. On a recent weekday morning, tables were filled with arrangements awaiting pickup or delivery.

Birchard also helps Lee by taking customer orders over the phone or in the shop, consulting with customers about arrangements for funerals, weddings – for which she is the primary consultant -- holidays or “just because.” Often, she and Lee do deliveries on their way home or as needed.

“We both do it all,” says Birchard.

The hours are long, as many as 60 per week from Monday through Saturday, but working with flowers and plants has been such a part of Birchard’s life that she can’t imagine doing anything else.

She started at age 14 at the Flower Barrel chain of shops in San Diego. Her stepfather was the chain’s CPA and helped her get a job when holiday help was needed.

She continued working through high school (Bonita Vista) and college (she got her business degree at San Diego State) before working for several shops around the county, including Casa de Oro Florist and Conroy’s, where she served as a general manager at a couple of locations.

Though she had no intentions of choosing the career when she was 14, by the time she finished SDSU and was in her early 20s, she knew she was suited to it.

“To do it this long, you have to love it,” says Birchard, who lives in La Mesa. “I’ve never been able to walk away from it.”

Back from Canada

At the time she met Lee, for instance, she was looking to re-establish herself in the San Diego area after living the previous seven years in Canada. She had moved with her husband (a Canadian) to a 10-acre spread in Ontario north of Toronto.

“Our closest neighbors were cows,” she says.

She spent most of her time managing and tending to the property, while slowing her pace and “enjoying life”  – yet still couldn’t divorce herself completely from the business.

During busy holiday times, she’d drive into civilization to help at some nearby florist shops.

Eventually, when she decided to return to San Diego, she worked for a while with a flower wholesaler, which is how she met Lee.

“Flower designers are hard to find,” says Birchard. “It’s a dying trade. It’s a hard job, it’s a lot of hours with the holidays and it’s a dirty job. And it takes a natural eye. It’s not really something you learn, it’s just something that some people can do.”

Designing is her favorite part of her trade.

“Even though I’ve gone into the management end of it, I always end up designing,” she says. “It’s something I do naturally, and something I have to do.”

Even when she was GM at Conroy’s she stayed lead designer.

She says a good designer has a natural eye “for balance and negative space” and can blend colors well.

As she’s talking, she pulls out an arrangement she made that morning, a big piece with a variety of flowers and plants, to explain the concepts. It’s perfectly balanced – almost symmetrical – and the “negative space” (open areas) between the plants and flowers on the perimeter of the arrangement allows a viewer’s eyes to more clearly see every element.

The hands-on work, she says, “is my most satisfying thing.”

One of the most difficult tasks can be designing sympathy arrangements. It can be hard coming up with a theme that looks lovely yet unique, with items special to the loved one or his family. She’s built or found miniature hockey sticks and golf bags and clubs, as well as company or team logos – even cans of beer – to incorporate into arrangements.

“Hands in dirt”

Birchard was raised in Bonita, among citrus and fruit trees on her property, and even today she loves to be outside, moving around and working with growing things.

“I love to garden,” she says. “I like to be outside. I like to have my hands in dirt and see (plants) growing.”

As much as she loves floral design, tending to growing things is equally satisfying.

“I love to see them come up, the new leaves, the first bloom,” she says. “A lot of people they buy something, they want to see it already done, and they’re happy with that. I like to see the whole growth process.

“It’s smelling the dirt and the time you spend out there with nature and with God and just letting it all fill you. It’s soothing to me.”

Aside from gardening, she enjoys cooking and spending time with animals when she’s away from work, and roots for the Chargers and Padres -- even during tough times.

As she thinks back to all her years in the business, Birchard says it’s been a perfect fit.

She gets to be creative and she gets to move around.

“I knew I never, ever wanted to sit at a desk all day,” she says. “I don’t have the personality or the temperament for it. I like to be in constant motion and this gives me that opportunity.”