Who opened the first flower shop in Hong Kong? It is a natural question for a city with a flower culture as vivid as the Mong Kok Flower Market, with its Lunar New Year blossom fairs and its centuries-old habit of giving flowers at weddings, openings and funerals. The honest answer is that no verified record names a single first florist. What historians and local sources do show is a trade that grew in stages: from farmers selling blooms to British residents in the late 19th century, to crowded flower stalls on a Central street in the early 1900s, to a formal flower market in Kowloon, and finally to the specialist florist shops and designer studios of today.
This article follows that story, explains why a definitive “first” is so hard to name, looks at the oldest florists still trading in Hong Kong, and suggests where to look if you want to research the question further.
Why there is no single “first florist”
“Florist” can mean several different things, and each has a different earliest date.
A grower who carries cut flowers to town and sells them door to door is a flower seller. A stallholder who sets up on a street corner each morning is a flower vendor. A shopkeeper with a fixed address who buys stock, arranges bouquets and takes orders is what most people picture as a florist. In Hong Kong the first kind almost certainly came well before the last, and the in-between stages blur together.
Two further problems make the question harder. First, early commerce in colonial Hong Kong was dominated by small, family-run Chinese businesses that left few written records, so trade directories and advertisements capture only a fraction of what existed. Second, the 20th century brought war, occupation, mass migration and relentless redevelopment, so many early businesses closed, moved or changed hands without leaving a trace. Anyone claiming a confident answer to “who was first” should be treated with caution.
The late 19th century: growers and British flower lovers
The commercial flower trade appears to have begun in the late 19th century. In the 1850s, agriculture in the colony was mostly small-scale farming, but by the later decades of the century a new group of customers had appeared. British residents who loved flowers began buying from local farmers, and this gradually turned scattered farm activity into a more organised business.
A 2022 book on the flower market’s history, Roots, Leaves and Flowers: Memory and Imagination of the Flower Market, reaches the same conclusion: the market’s roots lie in the late 19th century, when more flower-loving Britons settled in the city.
This matters for the “first florist” question because it describes demand rather than a shop. Colonial households wanted flowers for the home, for church, for dinners and for social occasions. Farmers supplied them. The earliest “florists” in Hong Kong were therefore probably growers who sold directly, and the retail side developed around them.
Hong Kong’s growing botanical profile was part of the same story. The Botanical Gardens in Central, which are the oldest park in the city, introduced residents to a wide range of ornamental plants. Botanist Stephen Dunn served in the colony’s botany and forestry department between 1903 and 1910, and among the plants he first scientifically described was Bauhinia blakeana, the Hong Kong orchid tree that later became the city’s emblem. An interest in ornamental plants, from officials and residents alike, helped create the market that florists would later serve.
The early 20th century: “Flower Street” in Central
The earliest solid evidence of flower retailing as a visible street trade comes from Central on Hong Kong Island. In the early 20th century, Wyndham Street picked up the nickname “Flower Street” because so many stalls along it sold flowers. This is useful evidence: a street does not earn a nickname like that unless flower selling has become a regular, recognisable part of daily life.
In 1928 the flower stalls were relocated to D’Aguilar Street, and the “Flower Street” name moved with them. That relocation suggests the trade was substantial enough to be managed and moved as a group, and it hints at an organised community of sellers rather than a handful of isolated vendors.
A Chinese-language local history, An Illustrated Story of Wyndham Street, 1840s–1960s, covers the street’s changing character and is a promising source for anyone who wants to learn who those early stallholders were.
The Kowloon side: railways, farmers and the flower market
The flower trade in Kowloon followed a different path, shaped by transport. The Kowloon-Canton Railway opened in 1910 and a station was built at Mong Kok East, which made it much easier for New Territories farmers to bring produce, including flowers, into Kowloon. The market area grew around that access.
Flower farmers began to gather daily in the district to sell. The market took its name from the Cantonese word for a market that assembles and then disperses when trading ends, which is why it is known as a “flower market” and not simply a street of shops.
In 1948 the colonial government formally named a new street Flower Market Road. The 1970s saw the road become the centre of Hong Kong’s wholesale flower trade, with more than 50 plant and flower shops clustered along it.
The shop-based model really took hold even later. Some florist wholesalers did not open permanent stores until the 1980s, after China’s opening-up made imported cut flowers competitive on price. One veteran florist who entered the trade in 1993 recalls only about 30 florists in the market at that point, most of them on Flower Market Road itself.
In other words, the flower market as a place of daily trading is far older than most of its permanent shops.
Mid-century change: migration and Chinese floral traditions
The influx of migrants from mainland China in the mid-20th century changed the trade. New arrivals brought regional floral customs with them, and flower stalls and markets multiplied, particularly in areas such as Mong Kok and Wan Chai. Local florists increasingly worked auspicious flowers into their offerings, including peonies and chrysanthemums, and popular festival flowers such as orchids and seasonal blooms were a staple.
This is when Hong Kong floristry developed its distinctive character: a mix of British-influenced arrangement and bouquet styles with Chinese symbolism, in which the choice of flower, its colour and even the number of stems can carry meaning. That blend is still visible in today’s shops.
The oldest florists still trading in Hong Kong
If a “first florist” cannot be named, the oldest surviving shops are the closest thing to a living link with the early trade.
Bydeau Florist is the name most often cited as a heritage florist in Hong Kong. Its founding date is reported inconsistently: one guide says 1946, another describes it as founded in the 1950s, and a third refers to nearly eight decades of business, which would point to the 1940s. It is widely regarded as a veteran of the trade, known for traditional design techniques and for using flowers rooted in local custom, but I would not describe it as the first florist in the city.
Bloom Florist, established in 1978, grew into a premium florist with operations beyond Hong Kong. Landmark Florist, operating since 1994, is known for bespoke bouquets. Sunny Florist, which opened in 2009 in the Flower Market, is often credited with popularising the flower-shop-and-café concept locally.
These businesses are all post-war, and most are much more recent. The pre-war flower trade survives mainly in the street names, the market’s history and the memories of long-established families, not in surviving shopfronts.