Originating from FFA President senior Faye Smith’s idea to create personalized corsages and boutonnieres for friends that attended last year’s Prom, Horticulture I and II plan to use their knowledge of floral design to provide floral arrangements and floral accessories to Prom attendees.

“As a horticulture class, we kind of get to decide what we want to do and since most of Horticulture II is the officer team, we can decide how we want our chapter to make money and get profits so we can keep doing things through the FFA,” junior Annika Senn said.

For approval, Smith first contacted principal Lisa Moore and later approached Student Council (StuCo) members and advisor Chris Wedel.

While the Prom committee will finance the floral centerpieces, Horticulture students are relying on preexisting program funds for the creation of floral accessories. They plan for their services to be financed by payment from student customers. While the Prom theme, Viva Las Vegas, will decide the design for the floral arrangements, student requests will play a role the design of corsages and boutonnieres.

“We’ll work closely. The good thing about them wanting to do some of the centerpieces is they have a lot of research ahead of them, like how to price flowers, how to price supplies, how to arrange flowers,” Moore said.

Depending on the interest gained at Newton High School, there is a possibility that horticulture students will offer their services to surrounding schools with Proms hosted on the same day.

“It’s whatever the [Horticulture students] are willing to do. If they feel like they have the time and we have the resources, then that is awesome,” agricultural instructor Paxton Trembly said. “I’m so proud of them, but with them being upperclassmen, it does need to stay within the realm of what they have time for.”

Horticulture classes are taking requests up until one month before Prom as they will be  creating the student corsages and boutonnieres in the week leading up to the event.

“I think it is going to take a lot longer than just their one class time so their going to come in during extra time and a lot of them are on prom committee, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Then they are gonna knock those out and we’ll store them for the rest of the week,” Trembly said.

While creating centerpieces for Prom and floral accessories are new ideas, the Horticulture classes will host their annual plant sale in early May. With Prom taking place in late April, the two projects will make for a hectic few weeks.

“It will definitely be a busy time for them, especially the Horticulture II kids. Luckily we have Horticulture I. They [Horticulture II] will be teaching them the skills that they [Horticulture I students] need to help,” Trembly said. “There will definitely be some extra hours put in outside of just class time.”

Not only will the project aide in gaining profits for the FFA program, but Senn said she believes it will assist with the Floriculture Career Development Event (CDE), a competition event where students test over floral design and management and identification of flowers.

“It’ll really help [making floral arrangements and accessories for Prom], especially if we are able to make it to state because at state it is a lot more hands-on type building,” Senn said. “At the district level it’s a lot more visual and just knowledge based, not necessarily building it.”

Although the program will benefit from the profit of their services, Trembly says she hopes for students to help their classmates and gain experiences.

“We aren’t really looking to make a profit, but just help out our classmates,” Trembly said.  If we do [make a profit] along the way, that’s fantastic and awesome; it rewards their hard work.”