WAYNE

Wayne florist had to shut down her business, but her heart is in full bloom

Philip DeVencentis
NorthJersey.com

WAYNE — Dayna Montaina has something that she would like to say.

This bud is for you.

The local florist has spent hours emptying her shop's walk-in refrigerators of carnations, daisies and roses, and delivering them — one at a time — to random homes around the township. Each stem has a care tag, with a handwritten note, wrapped around it.

Dayna Montaina, owner of Blooms of Wayne, walks along Chestnut Drive to deliver flowers to residents on March 31.

Montaina was forced to close her shop last month under an executive order by Gov. Phil Murphy that shut down nonessential retail businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic.

If arranged in baskets and bouquets, the flowers she has been giving away would fetch thousands of dollars, she said.

"You can fall into despair, or you can rise above it," said Montaina, who owns Blooms of Wayne on Hamburg Turnpike. "If I had to be closed, there was no reason why I couldn't take that time to try to do something for other people."

Montaina hit about six dozen homes on side streets, off Ratzer Road, during Tuesday afternoon's delivery. Residents of Beechwood and Chestnut drives found red roses on their front stoops, or carefully placed on their mailboxes.

She poked some of the stems through tight curls of wrought-iron porch railings.

"You just hope that one flower falls on the person that day who needs it the most," said Montaina, 48, a township native.

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She graduated from Wayne Hills High School in 1990 and opened her shop seven years later. She is engaged to be married, and has two sons: Colby, 15, and Logan, 19.

Montaina lives in the same home she was raised in on Manor Drive, a dead-end block, about 500 feet west of the corner of Alps Road and Hamburg Turnpike. "We never really had a neighborhood," she said. "We just had our street. So, it's nice to go to all of these other neighborhoods."

Montaina said she had a surplus of flowers in stock, partly because customers canceled parties last month to obey demands for "social distancing." As of Tuesday, she said, she still had plenty of flowers to last through the end of the week.

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Montaina said she did not consider saving the flowers until the governor's order is lifted because they no longer would be fresh enough to sell. And, simply letting them go bad was not an option either.

"What good does that do?" Montaina said.

"It's not going to give anyone hope," she added. "It's not going to make anyone smile. It would be such a waste, when so many people could use that one little pick-me-up that might make them go out and do something for someone else."

Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com Twitter: @PhilDeVencentis