When you get a bouquet of flowers, it probably elicits a sense of tranquility and peace of mind. All perfectly arranged and settled into place, it’s hard to imagine the chaotic process that brought it all together.

Laura Robertson helps that process bloom.

“It can be stressful,” says Robertson, a floral designer and manager at B/A Florist, 1424 E. Grand River Ave. “It can change from one second to the next - you have one or two orders, then it feels like somebody let the bus out out front because the store’s packed.”

The confusion usually escalates around what Robertson calls love holidays, such as Valentine’s Day and Sweetest Day, which is Saturday. Around these holidays, Robertson sometimes comes in at the crack of dawn to get all the arrangements done in time.

On Thursday, Robertson comes in at 9 a.m., turns on the computers, goes over the orders and instructs store employees on what they will do during the day.

She then gathers the flowers needed to make the first arrangement of the day: a tropical contemporary arrangement. She makes the formation in a back room, standing up.

“You do a lot of weight-shifting,” she says as she puts her right leg up against the table. “I do this even in a dress.”

The arrangement, which includes red proteias, grapevines and dark green leaves, ends up about 3 feet high and reaches straight up.

“This is a large tropical contemporary arrangement,” Robertson says. “These arrangements can go up, out or crooked. That’s what’s cool about contemporary arrangements - everything comes out different.”

While she is working, Robertson helps sort out orders, answers employees questions and occasionally talks to customers.

“If anybody has custom orders, I go out front and talk to them,” she says. “Sometimes it’s better to talk to the designer.”

Robertson makes two more arrangements, then starts work on a last-minute order for a party later that night.

“Generally, we prefer party work to be done ahead of time,” she says as she puts a large white candle on top of a green piece of oasis - a dry and spongelike material that holds flowers in place - for an arrangement for the party’s buffet table.

Unfortunately, Robertson says, last-minute requests happen every day.

These orders increase on the holidays, B/A co-owner Lauri VanArk says.

“They’ll be pounding on the door at 5 or 6,” she says.

VanArk, who is working across the counter from Robertson, is making corsages for the Okemos High School homecoming dance, which falls on Sweetest Day.

This is not unusual, Robertson says.

“Unfortunately, there is almost always some type of dance on top of a holiday,” she says. “And corsages, even though they are smaller, are a lot more time-consuming than the average arrangement.”

As she sticks baregrass - long, dark green grass - into the side of the block of oasis, Robertson says she tries to do more popular - and easier - styles around the holidays.

“Is it too late to take an order for Saturday?” an employee asks.

“No, it’s not,” Robertson says. She then directs another employee to the phone and gives an order away to another designer.

“I sort orders as they come off the computer,” Robertson says. “I try to sort them (right away) and hand them to people to do.”

On holidays, orders often overflow, Robertson says, pointing to a box of arrangements to be made the next day.

“I’m hoping to get out of here by 7,” she says. “Tomorrow we’ll probably be here till 9.

“Many times we’re here till midnight - holidays are very unpredictable.”

As she adds stargazers - star-shaped flowers with pink stripes on the inside - to the arrangement, a wholesale driver from a flower-growing company in Grand Rapids walks in with different flowers Robertson has ordered.

Flowers for holiday arrangements are ordered days, and sometimes weeks, in advance.

“I have to order what we’re going to make and what we’re going to make it with,” Robertson says. “Preparing for the holiday takes longer than the actual holiday.”

After making sure all her orders have come in, Robertson signs the invoice for the flowers. She has hardly begun adding leather leaf leaves when another wholesale driver, this time from Indiana, appears with boxes of small flowers.

Robertson opens the boxes and starts “prepping” - taking the flowers out of the boxes, counting them and making sure they look good.

“Sometimes we get really bad flowers and we have to send them back,” she says.

The good ones will be cut and put in water.

B/A salesperson Christe Lorence helps with the prepping.

“We share time between prepping, helping customers and answering phones,” she says.

Answering phones is one thing Robertson tries not to do.

“It’s so busy and we have extra staff around the holidays,” she says as she cuts a red rose to put in her arrangement. “But we all do all of it when we need to.”

Robertson sorts some orders that have just come in and checks on the business in the store.

“Being a manager and designer, I end up helping everyone as much as I can to make sure everyone’s had lunch and nobody’s fainting,” she says.

Robertson herself skips lunch today but grabs some of the food other employees have brought in. Around the holidays, there is less time to eat, so everyone tries to bring something to share. This way, employees only have to walk downstairs to get food.

“We know life stops around the holidays,” Robertson says.

She says that as a manager, she has so many duties that it can be hard to remember what to do next.

“You’re doing a hundred things, answering a hundred questions and you keep stopping and starting,” she says. “But somebody has to know what is going on in all locations so we can make sure it all flows.”

After adding some more stargazers and roses, Robertson takes the arrangement downstairs to store it with the other holiday arrangements in a 38-degree room. The floor in her workspace is now covered with pieces of flowers and leaves.

“I sweep six or seven times a day,” she says. “Some designers sweep a lot more - they don’t like having anything on the floor. But I like it because it’s an extra cushion.”

Lorence says she’s “pretty happy to work with flowers every day.

“But it’s a lot more work than I imagined.”