You can still get free flowers at Mall of America next Wednesday. Petal It Forward comes to the Huntington Bank Rotunda on Oct. 14 at 11 a.m. Bachman's and the mall are running it together, and the mall's listing still shows it as free while the flowers last.
Everyone who stops by gets 2 flowers. Organizers said one is yours to keep and the other goes to "a friend, family member, coworker, or even a complete stranger." The mall's listing puts it in 4 lines: "Take two flowers. Keep one. Give one. Petal it forward." The mall said thousands of flowers will fill the Rotunda, and it called the campaign a "nationally recognized movement" meant to start "a ripple effect of kindness."
You don't need to register. Just show up. Because the flowers run out when they run out, come close to 11 a.m. if you want to be sure you get some. Coming in after lunch is a gamble.
The mall's version is one stop on a much bigger day. Petal It Forward is a national campaign run by the Society of American Florists, and Oct. 14 is the 12th annual edition. Retailers, growers, wholesalers, importers and suppliers all take part on the same day. Each one picks how many flowers to hand out and where. The idea is that every second flower spreads a bit of kindness to someone who wasn't there.
Plenty of businesses join in. The Society of American Florists said more than 525 participants from all 50 states signed on in 2025, plus businesses in Colombia, Ecuador, England and India. If you see someone with a spare bloom outside a flower shop somewhere else in the metro that day, it's probably the same campaign.
The Rotunda is the big open space in the mall. Go there, take your 2 flowers, and then decide who gets the second one. A coworker, a neighbor or the cashier at your next stop would all work. Or you could just keep both, but that's not really the point.
