Blumen-Holm

By Pistoriusplatz in the centre of Weissensee

Blumen-Holm sits at Pistoriusstrasse 147a in Weissensee, a little away from the main axes and yet in the middle of the district. The street carries the name of Johann Heinrich Leberecht Pistorius, who bought the Weissensee manor estate in 1821, turned it into a model farm and developed a still of his own for making spirits; he lies buried by the village church. Pistoriusplatz next door was long known locally as the goat meadow and belongs to the quieter corners of the borough of Pankow. A few minutes away lie Antonplatz with its cinema, the Weisser See with its park, which gave the district its name, and the Jewish cemetery, opened in 1880 and holding more than a hundred thousand graves. The area is residential, with pre-war houses, post-war terraces and many small businesses, and a flower shop that knows its customers fits exactly into that mixture. There is no underground here, but the trams run along Berliner Allee, and the stop Albertinenstrasse at the start of Pistoriusstrasse is served by the M4, M13 and 12.

In the district since 1992 and in the second generation

Blumen-Holm was founded in Weissensee in 1992, and today the second generation runs the family business. Seven people belong to the team, and the shop trains its own florists, which in this trade is no longer a matter of course. The guiding line of the house is that it makes flowers and not science, and with that comes quality before quantity: the range changes with the seasons, and the flowers come from the region where possible and otherwise from fair trade. The work runs from the simple meadow flower to the elegant arrangement, and beside it stand room decorations, wedding flowers after a prior conversation, event decoration and funeral flowers, for which the house brings more than thirty years of experience. Beside the flowers there is a range of its own for the home: furniture with an antique air, taper candles in a wide choice of colours, Swiss scented candles with essential oils, vessels and vases as well as cushions and lamps from Holland. Old vases and decorative pieces are deliberately given a second life.