Most people in Los Angeles have driven past the Flower District without knowing it was there. It occupies a few blocks of Downtown that look, from the outside, like any other stretch of loading bays and roller shutters. Inside, before most of the city is awake, it is the largest wholesale flower district in the United States.
Our Downtown LA studio at 801 S Olive St sits nine tenths of a mile from its front door, a walk of about twenty minutes. Flowerbar Florist has been arranging flowers in Los Angeles since 2021, and this district is where the work starts. This is what we would tell a friend who wanted to go.
Where the district is
The district runs from San Pedro Street west to Maple Avenue, and from Seventh Street south to Ninth. That is a compact rectangle in the southeast corner of Downtown, wedged between the Fashion District and Skid Row. Two wholesale markets sit at its centre, a single street apart, and a ring of independent supply shops, ribbon and vase dealers, and dried-flower specialists fills the blocks around them.
The two markets grew out of two communities. Japanese American growers organised the Southern California Flower Market first. European immigrant growers organised what became the Original Los Angeles Flower Market a few years later. Both eventually moved into the 700 block of South Wall Street, and both still trade there today.
The Original Los Angeles Flower Market, 754 Wall Street
The larger of the two, at 754 Wall St, between Seventh and Eighth. This is the one to visit first if you are only visiting one.
It is genuinely open to the public. The market's own visitor page states that general admission is $2 per person daily, and that children 16 years and under are free when accompanied by an adult. Badge-holding trade buyers get in free. You do not need a business licence, a resale certificate or an introduction. You need two dollars and a reasonably early alarm.
Inside it is a covered hall of individual stalls, each an independent business. Some are growers selling their own crop. Some are importers. Some specialise so narrowly that they sell one genus and nothing else. Prices are wholesale, quantities are wholesale, and the unit of purchase is usually a bunch or a box rather than a stem.
The Southern California Flower Market, 742 Maple Avenue
A street over, at 742 Maple Ave. Older, smaller and, to our eye, a little quieter. Its own site gives its hours as Monday to Saturday, 5 AM to 1 PM, and lists covered and roof parking at the Maple Avenue address.
If you have time for both, go here second. The overlap in stock is real but not total, and the difference in atmosphere is worth the extra half hour.
The hours question, answered honestly
Both markets trade from 5 AM, Monday to Saturday. Both are closed on Sunday. That much is consistent across every source we could check, including the markets' own pages.
The closing time is a different matter, and we are going to be straight about it rather than publish a number that might be wrong. The markets' own pages do not agree with each other, and individual vendors inside them post their own hours that differ again. To take one example: the Original market's visitor page gives 5 AM to 1 PM, while Mellano and Company, a grower with stalls 27 to 29 inside that same building, publishes Monday to Thursday 5 AM to noon and Friday to Saturday 5 AM to 1 PM on its own site.
The practical advice that follows from that is simple. Treat the afternoon as unreliable and go early. Before a major flower holiday, hours change again, and the schedules published for previous years are not a guide. Call the market or the specific vendor the day before.
Getting there and parking
Do not circle looking for a meter. Both markets have their own parking, and it is the least stressful part of the trip.
The Original market has a rooftop parking structure whose entrance is on the west side of San Julian Street, between Seventh and Eighth, plus several surrounding lots. The market's own page says it accepts both cash and credit cards for parking, with limited street parking also available. The Southern California Flower Market has covered and roof parking at 742 Maple Ave.
Bring cash for the flowers themselves regardless. Every stall is a separate business and payment methods vary from one to the next, so cash removes a conversation you do not want to have at 6 AM with an armful of stock.
How to shop the market without getting in the way
The district is a working wholesale market before it is an attraction, and at 5 AM the aisles are full of people loading vans against a delivery schedule. A few habits make you welcome rather than tolerated.
- Bring your own buckets and a box. Nothing you buy will be wrapped for a car boot. A couple of five-gallon buckets with an inch of water in the footwell is the standard solution.
- Do not block an aisle to photograph it. Step to the side of a stall, take the picture, move on. Nobody minds a camera; everybody minds a stationary person in a loading lane.
- Ask before you handle stems. Bruised petals are unsellable, and the vendor eats the loss.
- Buy by the bunch. Asking for three stems of something is the fastest way to be politely ignored.
- Ask what came in this morning. It is the single best question in the building, and vendors answer it happily.
- Plan for the drive home. Flowers that have been out of water in a warm car for an hour are not the flowers you bought. Go straight home, and cut the stems and get them into water the moment you arrive.
What is actually grown in California
The market sells the world. Boxes arrive from Colombia, Ecuador, the Netherlands and Kenya, and there is nothing wrong with any of them. But the reason a Los Angeles florist has an advantage is the California crop that turns up here first, hours rather than days from the field.
Mellano and Company, at 766 Wall St inside the Original market, is a useful example: a Southern California grower with fields in Oceanside and Carlsbad, selling its own crop from stalls in the hall, and open to both florists and the general public. Ask a grower's stall what is coming out of their own ground this week and you will get a straight answer.
What that answer will be depends on the month. Ranunculus and stock in late winter and spring, pincushion protea from February to April, sunflowers from March, field-grown garden roses from mid-April, dahlias through the summer, Safari Sunset in the autumn, and California greens such as eucalyptus, myrtle and olive in all twelve months. Peonies, whatever anyone tells you, are not a California crop and arrive imported all year round.
The kind of thing that comes back from a good market morning.
Nude Spray Roses
Spray roses are the bunch Olivia picks up and turns over first, because several heads on one stem hide nothing.
Pastel Harmony
Stock is bought by smell, standing over the bucket, which is the part of the market no photograph replaces.
Caramel Silk
French roses are the stall you walk to last, once you know what the rest of the morning has given you.
Nine tenths of a mile away
If a 5 AM start in Downtown is not your idea of a morning, that is what we are for. Our Downtown LA studio is a short walk from the market, and our Glendale and Pasadena studios buy from the same district. Our designers are European-trained, and the mono-bouquet, one flower done properly, is our signature format and the one that rewards a good market morning most.
Browse our bouquets or a mono-bouquet in a vase, or call +1 (626) 888-8449 and tell us what you are trying to say. We are open daily, 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM. The same-day cutoff is 3:00 PM Pacific, express runs 2 to 3 hours, and Ready Now takes about an hour. If the flowers arrive and they are not fresh, we replace them or refund you.
Questions about a specific delivery are best answered by a person: contact us, or see every area we deliver to.