Kathrine Nero: Swan Floral has bloomed in NKY for 100 years

Clara “Boo” Schreiver looked at her husband Albert one fall day in 1921 and decided his horse-drawn newspaper delivery wagon needed a little something else.

Her gorgeous Jersey Beauty dahlias.

She had been growing them in her garden in their side yard at their home in Fort Mitchell and figured other people might like them, too. So they packed up some buckets, along with their aptly named son Bud, and off they went.

It wasn’t too long before her blooms were outselling Albert’s Kentucky Post and Times-Star newspapers.

And so, a green thumb and a great idea is now a four-generation Northern Kentucky institution.

Swan Floral has been owned by the Schreiver family ever since. Even now, six siblings in the fourth generation of Schreivers work side-by-side at the expansive shop on Dixie Highway.

“Can you believe a woman started a business 100 years ago?” asks Lynn Brauch, one of those siblings.

Initially, Clara and Albert would pull up the wagon at cemeteries for visitation days, where they’d sell out. Soon that turned into deliveries, which turned into making funeral baskets and boxwood wreaths.

The business was booming.

But at the time, it was still called Schreiver and Son, and was run out of the basement of that same Fort Mitchell home. That is, until the family learned the famed Swan Restaurant in Erlanger was up for sale in 1955.

“It was a well-known place that people would go to after they’d go to the track, after Churchill Downs, they’d stop and have dinner,” explains Jeff Schreiver. “The property came up for sale and my grandfather and great-grandfather thought it would be a great place for a flower shop.”

And a great name, apparently. That’s when the business became Swan Floral and Gift Shop, Schreiver and Son – and has been in that same spot on Dixie Highway ever since. What once were cozy dinner booths are now nooks for floral displays. The original carved wooden swans provide decoration, right alongside the flowers.

Out back there’s a greenhouse, and inside there are rooms and rooms of items to help Northern Kentuckians celebrate and sympathize.

The flower business is a personal one, you know. Customers are experiencing the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. And even with the ease and convenience of the internet, walk-ins, regulars and phone calls still make up much of their business.

As Jeff explains, “Everyone wants that personal touch.”

“Every phone call is different, depending on what the situation, or the celebration might be,” says Lynn. “A lot of people just need to talk and we’re there to listen. So we listen – and we turn that feeling into flowers.”

I have a feeling Clara would approve.

Kathrine is a big dahlia fan and hosts Coffee Break with Kathrine on The Enquirer’s Facebook page, weekdays at 10am. Sign up for her email newsletter at cincinnati.com/newsletters.