Petals, north and south.

My mother traveled North America looking for flowers. Not grocery-store flowers — the kind you find at a botanical garden, or tucked into a greenhouse on a back road in Québec. She came home with cuttings, seeds, and stories, and I grew up thinking that was normal.

I settled in Charlotte and learned the Piedmont: its late springs, its humid summers, the small farms that will grow you anything if you ask early. I started designing for weddings and private events here, and I've kept the studio small on purpose.

So when I design for a wedding or private event today, the flowers carry a little of that distance — the rare, the seasonal, the remembered. Protea next to Carolina-grown lisianthus. A café au lait dahlia because it's August and the farm finally has them.