There's a detail about Cole's Flowers that doesn't quite register until you do the math: Clarence Cole opened the shop in 1937, and today his great-granddaughter Paula is the one answering the phone, designing the arrangements, and running the deliveries. That's not a tagline. That's nearly ninety years of one family making flowers in Addison County.

Paula didn't always plan on it. She went off and did her own thing, she'll tell you, and came back to floristry as a young adult — tried it, loved it, never left. When her parents closed the shop in 2005, she reopened it just two months later. That's the kind of commitment that doesn't come from a business plan.

The shop is now at 18 Creek Road, Suite 4 — tucked into a quieter corner of Middlebury but entirely worth finding. Paula and her team design for every occasion and every budget: birthday flowers, anniversary arrangements, get well bouquets, holiday centerpieces, wedding flowers, funeral arrangements. Daily delivery to all local funeral homes and hospitals. They take custom orders from your specific idea or create something on their own judgment — a "something springy" gives Paula room to experiment with varieties, foliage, and scale. With funerals especially, she says, people want something that represents the person who passed — a favorite color, a particular flower, sometimes a personal item worked into the mechanics of the piece.

What you notice when you read what people say about Cole's is that they talk about it the way you'd talk about a doctor you trust or a mechanic who doesn't overcharge: as someone who doesn't let you down. The long-distance orders, placed by people whose families are still in Vermont, consistently arrive as described and on time. The last-minute requests get handled. The creative ones — a mixed floral and vegetable arrangement for a garden-loving uncle's memorial service — come back as something everyone at the service remarks on.

Nearly ninety years. That kind of track record tells you something.

Cole's Flowers
18 Creek Road, Suite 4, Middlebury, VT | (802) 388-4003 | colesmiddleburyflowers.com
Mon–Fri 9am–5:30pm | Saturday by appointment | Online ordering available 24/7