About
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.
She kept a small leather notebook with pressed petals and Latin names in pencil. Himalayan blue poppy from a conservatory in Montréal. Louisiana iris from a bayou nursery. Torch lily someone had rescued from a closing farm. I don't have the notebook anymore, but I have the habit — the curiosity that assumes a flower you've never seen is worth the drive.
Moving to North Carolina meant learning a new calendar. Sweet pea comes early and leaves quick. Ranunculus loves our cool springs. Zinnias and dahlias carry August. I source from a handful of Piedmont flower farms I trust, drive to the South Carolina foothills for foliage, and fill the gaps from the wholesale market when the season needs help.
Heatherly Floral Designs is one designer, a short list of collaborators, and a calendar that holds fewer than a dozen weddings a year. I take private events, design bespoke plants for homes and storefronts, and offer a small seed catalog each winter. Small by choice, not by accident — it's the only way the work stays honest.
01
I design from what the Piedmont and the farms are actually offering that week. Menus shift; so do arrangements. You'll see a palette and a feeling before you see a species list.
02
Protea, anthurium, pincushion, king protea, unusual foliage — I reach for these when a room needs a note you can't get from a grocery-store bucket. Not as spectacle. As punctuation.
03
The studio is a thread back to my mother's travels. Flowers as memory, as inheritance, as a quiet way of keeping someone nearby.
04
Local first, market second. I'd rather use a slightly smaller Carolina dahlia than a perfect import, and I'll tell you which is which.
05
The same reason my mother drove for a cutting is the reason a chef wants shiso or Thai basil on the property. When a client wants to grow their own, I help them build for it — a herb wall, a raised bed, a small greenhouse corner.
We book a limited number of projects each season. Send a note and we’ll reply within two business days.
