Nearly three years after the creation of Southside Blooms, the sustainable flower shop has found a permanent home where customers can browse the brightly colored flowers and beeswax candles decorating the spacious storefront.
They’ve also cemented an unexpected partnership with the Midwest Israel Consulate.
Since Southside Blooms’ inception in 2020, Quilen Blackwell has been turning vacant lots into sustainable flower farms and hiring South Side youths to work for the business.
A previously vacant building at 6250 S. Morgan St. in Englewood now has floral decals and decor lining the walls since the shop’s brick and mortar store opened in December.
Created by Blackwell’s nonprofit, Chicago Eco House, which helps at-risk youth, Southside Blooms employs 15 youths that help arrange bouquets and work the 10 acres of flower farms scattered throughout the city. There are beehives on-site that provide beeswax for natural candles.
Each farm is solar-powered and free of pesticides. Southside Blooms as a whole tries to be as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible, even down to using recycled newspapers for wrapping.
The partnership with the Israeli consulate blossomed over the last year. Yinam Cohen, consul general of Israel to the Midwest, said he’s always looking for new ways to be part of the community on Chicago’s South and West sides.
Cohen said, “What we try to do is to think what added value we might have in our country that is relevant for the communities here and could be the basis for partnerships that would benefit the communities, and hopefully, to us too,” Cohen said.
“From our perspective is what we’re doing here is economic development,” Blackwell added. “We’re creating jobs for a lot of youth here in the community. When they reach out to us, we got really excited, because Israel’s really known for a lot of their technology, a lot of their economic prowess.”
Because of the partnership, Blackwell will travel to Israel in February to learn from Israel’s top designer in the floral industry.
“We do have a pretty big Jewish customer base,” Blackwell said. “So, for example, chuppahs are a very popular arch that we use for our weddings. So we’re gonna go to Israel, and we’re gonna learn basically how to do a more traditional chuppah to bring that back here, which then will help us with our wedding customers, which then helps our youth have more jobs.”
The last year has brought the floral company a bump in business. Southside Blooms was featured on the “Ellen Show,” which gifted it $10,000.
“That was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity I never thought would ever happen,” Blackwell said. “They reached out to us (on Instagram).”
Prior to the storefront, Southside Blooms clients could order online. Now customers can browse in person on Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“I think this is really also just about showing bridge-building and unity across cultures, races, etc.,” Blackwell said.
Mariah Rush is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
