Wild Flora

Woke up to cherry blossoms and tulips. Welcome back spring.

The feeling of each moment of this day for Sierra and Cam, beautifully captured by @sheyallenfilms

I think it's possible we've lost touch with reality. And within that, I think it's also possible we've lost a sense of the importance of making mistakes. The beauty of our flaws. The power of the moment we get to admit to someone we love that we messed up. And ask them to make space for our humanity. This latest episode of Wild Flora TV is possibly my favorite. Watch me bumble through making a bouquet in a blizzard (not part of the plan). Somewhere in there you can hear @sheyallenfilms laughing along with me. And @haleynord is there too freezing her keister off just to get me some good photos. I have always loved these women and my friendship with them. But this was a needed reminder of how lucky I am to have friends like these. Because they see me as a whole being and are willing to show up even when what I have to offer is less than perfect. Watch the latest episode at https://www.wildfloramonthly.com/wild-flora-tv-preview

To my fellow creative friends, be careful of comparison. As the world returns to full volume, and our feeds fill back up to overflowing, just a gentle reminder to distinguish between inspiration and comparison. Inspiration is exciting, heart expanding, and full of hope. Comparison is contracting, alienating, and devastating to authentic creation. If you find yourself in the latter space, put your phone away, take a moment to pause, honor where you are on your creative journey, congratulate yourself for what you have accomplished through plenty of hard work and discipline, go outside and watch the shadow and light at play on the soil. This, here, now is where you belong. #inspiration #authenticity #creation #floralartistry Photo by @haleynord #artistsway #sustainablefloristry #floraleducation #inspiration

Happy wedding day to Hannah and Roy. And thank you to @threesproutsflowerfarm for pulling us through another week of epic flower shortages in the wholesale market by picking every last dahlia for us before this weeks freeze. #slowflowers #localflowers #utahflorist

Happy wedding day to Hannah and Roy. Thank you to @threesproutsflowerfarm for collecting every last dahlia before this weeks freeze to help us make this bouquet come to life. Another week of epic flower shortages in the wholesale flower market made manageable by so many incredible local growers. #localflowers #utahflorist #slowflowers

Wild grasses to catch the way the sunlight shifts in September to a deep gold…dancing in flashes of autumn leaves.

Little wild just full of local blooms for Francesca and Pierre at @altaperuvian Planning @bellebodasevents Photo @kh.chris Catering @saltdcateringco

During a week of unprecedented flower shortages, we were able to get every stem we needed for our weddings. So much gratitude to our wonderfully hard working reps at @espritrawflowers for finding us our imported stems and all the local farmers we leaned on to find us everything else. I have always prioritized local flowers. Never has it been more important to a successful week of flowering than now. Thank you to @poppinblossoms, @happytrowelsfarm, @hidden_creekfarmington and @thebloomedlife for all the most beautiful locally grown things. And to @wasatchblooms for showing up with a bucket of things when I mentioned it was the most stressful flower ordering week of my career. I could not do this without all your incredibly hard work.

Returned to my homeland in Alaska after twenty years away. And quickly remembered what matters most to me. Thank you to Kim and Mark for sharing this beautiful place with us. To Salem for putting up with the hour hike in, the skeeters, the all night sunlight and the cow parsnip. And to Bryan for rescuing this old rowboat and stealing my heart…again. Here’s to resting and coming back filled up.

Can’t get over these ROSES.

Ben (@blackwingclay) materializes out of the ether one day and asks me via a post-surf Zoom call from the beach, if I might like to collaborate with him and his partner Tolley Rippon on some ceramics.  In the course of our conversation, I decided to invite him to work with me on a collaborative episode of @wildflora.tv. He drives his truck from San Francisco, through the Nevada desert, past Salt Lake City and into the southern desert to meet us.  He pulls twenty different vessels out of the back of his truck. All wrapped in paper and cloth and strewn among art books, clay mugs and vintage camp cookware. As I hold each piece, feel the matte of the fired clay, the differing weights, the textures, some with fingerprints, some smooth as stone with scattered with barnacles, I realize how little in the course of a day I am in the presence of the hand-made. And how much the hand-made is imbued with spirit. The next episode of @wildflora.tv airs next week. Watch it at www.wildflora.tv Photo @haleynord Filming For @wildflora.tv by @sheyallenfilms With @blackwingclay and @neon_thread

Thinking of this place littered with abalone shells...trailing behind new friends...absorbed in the sites and textures on the ground...dragging a tangle of bull kelp twice the size of my own silhouette across the shore and back to the car...

Spent an early spring weekend with @sheyallenfilms @blackwingclay and @_c_h_y_l_d_ filming our next episode of Wild Flora TV. Here’s a little behind the scenes...Ben and I experimenting with pottery, plants, earth and rock. Can’t wait to share this one with you.

Following the lead of @maxgilldesign and donating to @redcanarysong today.

This wild bouquet was built on the branches of a plum tree now fallen. Filled in with spring blooming Smokebush and plenty of local flowers for one intensely wild shoot at the Bonnevilled Salt Flats.

Thrilled to watch this local sustainable market blossom and grow. Order low waste sustainable goods online. This beautiful market opens for shopping IRL (including product refills to replace your single-use items) on March 9. Check it out at www.cultivatemarkets.com.

Being a wild florist means connecting with the land, the seasons and the plants that make up my floral creations. It means working with local farms to source sustainably grown blooms from only a few miles away. It means letting the natural spirit of the plants I work with inform the style of my arrangements. It means not worrying too much about the trends or the “rules”. It means letting go of control and embracing the present moment, even if that moment brings a blizzard in June or a wildfire in August or a wilted bouquet spruced up with some really striking foraged weeds. It means taking pause in moments where I find myself standing on top of a mountain with a bucket of flowers and looking out at untouched wilderness to express gratitude for the gift that is this floral life. It has been a good year to do some reflection. And out of that has come the decision to change the name of my business to ‘Wild Flora’ to better capture the spirit of it. I look forward to inviting you in on all the upcoming wild adventures this resilient little business of mine has in store.

It’s been a wild year. And I have had plenty of time to reflect on my ‘why’. And to get real with myself about the life I truly want to live. And how I want to give back. All that considered, I have decided to change the name of my business to ‘Wild Flora’ to better reflect the spirit of it and to put away the name ‘Beehive Floral Co’. I founded my floral company after a particularly inspiring (and pre-hypothermic) moment intentionally lost in a field on a 200 year old farm, up to my knees in snow, clippers in hand, watching a barn owl fly by. In that moment, for the first time in years, I suddenly felt reconnected with what it meant to be myself. This frozen moment in the wild became a touchstone to my experience growing up in a native traditional village along the Yukon River in the wilds of Alaska. The wildness that made me a pretty weird kid once I moved to the Lower 48. The wildness that informs who I am proud to be as an adult. I spent much of my childhood exploring the forests, rivers and wild iris flanked inlet of the Pacific Ocean.  I started my career in floral twenty years ago, first as a horticulturist at Denver Botanic Gardens, then as a florist at a little flower shop in downtown Denver. I spent another ten years in fine art and graphic design before returning to floral.  I opened my floral business out of a desire to create locally sourced, nature-inspired floral design with a heart for sustainability. I give of my time and resources to supporting and fostering the growth of small family farms, particularly those owned by women, members of the LGTBQ+ community and BIPOC. The revenue from this floral business and every one of my wonderful clients is what allows me to do so. Wild Flora is more than just a business for me, it’s a community of like minded individuals, employees, collaborators, farmers, couples and other businesses who are wild at heart. Here’s to the beauty of watching the coming years unfold, grow and bloo