How Julie Vance turned her dreams of opening a floral shop to reality

Our success story this week is about an Indiana florist who has decorated the necks of Indy 500 champions for 30 years and who opened her own shop on the strength of her floral talent.

Julie Vance is the owner of Buck Creek and Bloom, located in Yorktown, Indiana. In addition to creating her signature designs for local special occasions, she’s world-famous for assembling the iconic floral racing award.

It opened in November of 2007, but she has been doing flowers since 1988. She opened in her hometown and said she would not have started a flower shop if she didn’t have good design skills and knowledge of the business. She emphasized that it’s really hard work and you have to be really dedicated and put in long hours.

She has been the designer that has the privilege of making the Indianapolis 500 winners’ wreath. It is a Borg Warner tradition that the winner of the race is crowned with a wreath, drinks the milk, and then his face is put in silver on the Borg Warner trophy in the beginning.

Here at the shop, her signature look is probably what she calls her sticks because she uses a lot of natural vines and curly willow and pods and shelf mushrooms and moss and all those real natural things mixed in with the flowers and plants, which what sets them apart from others.

Her path to success was just hard work including work at many other flower shops. Julie just loved this kind of work and it was her artistic outlet, so she always knew she would like to be a flower shop owner.