Stem & Vine

Following my mother around as she carefully tended her gardens. My paternal grandmother painstakingly digging up her daffodil bulbs to bring them with her from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. My mother digging up and dividing her irises that had been in her own mother’s garden growing up. Give me the smell of lilac and I can recall every spring cutting large clumps from my neighbors’ yard to give

to my teachers. Give me the smell of a garden rose and I am immediately transported back to my maternal grandparents’ house in the summer. My journey has taken many turns away from flowers. I have been a SCUBA diving guide, an aquarist, and I even headed up a customer service department for several years. But I have always been drawn back to their beauty. Then in 2011 my sister got married and I decided I could handle doing the flowers. I have been devoted to them ever since. Over the years I have had the chance to work with and learn from some amazing designers. I feel you can never stop growing and learning. The more clients I work with and the more arrangements I make I have come to realize many other people have the same connections to flowers as I do. For many people, the smell or sight of a specific flower brings back a flood of memories. Many may not realize it, though, until presented with said flower. My goal is to share flowers with as many people as possible so as to unlock all of these fond memories. Because through our past we grow as people. You could describe my design style as loose and whimsical. I have always been fascinated by the unusual. That could mean using flowers typically dismissed as weeds or using an old water pitcher to hold an arrangement instead of a standard vase. The environment has always played a large part in my life. This manifests itself in my floral design through the use of materials sourced as close to home as possible. That could mean foraging for bayberry and wild blueberry along the side of the road, cutting hosta leaves and dahlias from my own garden, or going to a local farm to harvest lisianthus and sweet peas. I also take delight in my clients bringing me something they cherish, whether it be flowers they’ve grown themselves or their mother’s old trifle bowl, and designing with it. Having a connection makes something all the more special and meaningful.