By: Alfonso Reyes Vazquez
Since the beginning of the 2025 Spring semester, the El Diamante floral design class has been doing much more than just designing flower arrangement. They have been consistently delivering floral arrangements each week to the Kaweah Health Hospital gift shop to be sold, and this is all made possible by the class and their teacher Mrs. Veldhuizen.
Credit: EDHS FFA Instagram
Floral design teacher Mrs. Veldhuizen states, “This opportunity was brought to us and I went to a meeting last summer with the hospital. [The hospital then] asked if our class would be able to handle this task and up for the challenge.” Although there were nerves initially, this work has become an “amazing hands-on floral experience for the students.” This highlights just how important experiences like these are for students to build more interaction with the subject and a better understanding of what is being taught.
Veldhuizen remarked, “Our biggest challenge has been estimating what the gift shop will need each week.” Despite these challenges, they have since implemented a system to better improve the limited time which includes focusing on the hospital orders every Wednesday. This has ensured that they are way more efficient with their work.
But that is not all they are limited to. As Mrs. Veldhuizen later mentioned, they also make arrangements for a variety of events for the city of Visalia, VUSD events, weddings, funerals, and much more. The prices of such arrangements depend on the base size and the vase used.
The floral design students have put an incredible amount of work into these beautiful arrangements. Arranging these flowers helps contribute to the Visalia community and gives the students real-world experience that they can use outside of high school.