PITTSFIELD, Illinois- Downtown Pittsfield has a new business that is bringing beauty  to the community with a touch of big city flair.

 KHQA's Stephen Johnson visited Stollard's Flowers and Gifts...where the motto is,  " We make the ordinary extraordinary."

Stollard's Flowers and Gifts at 107 East Washington street.

 The store specializes in fresh and silk flower arrangements.

It also has a specialty line of chocolates.

Owner Henry Stollard spent many years learning the art of flower arranging and says there's a whole lot more to making beautiful arrangements than just putting some flowers in a vase.

   Henry says,  " There's a lot of mechanics involved. There is a lot of little tricks  and secrets and chemicals and tools and mechanics you use to make them do what you want them to do."

From the beginning Henry's goal was to create a store that had the look of a high end store that you might find in Chicago, but with small town prices and a hometown feel.

He says,  " What I really want is that they feel like they've entered into someplace  where they feel like they are welcome to sit down and watch us do what we're doing and chat, have a conversation with us. I want this to feel like someplace that's very welcoming. And they're going to get treated like they're a friend."

To encourage that friendly atmosphere, Henry designed his store with an open floor plan.

The front is a display area full of beautiful arrangements.

That leads to an open work area where people can sit and watch their arrangements being made.

Henry says that he always has to be thinking ahead in this business, but that's part of the fun of the job.

Henry says," We're always, as far as planning what we're doing, a year ahead of time. So we've been planning out spring and actually getting into summer and next fall."

Henry also says he'll never stop learning his craft.

In a few weeks he's taking a trip to Canada to learn from one of the premiere floral arrangers in the world.

 And believe it or not...at the end of  November he starts getting ready for Christmas.