About us
Heaven's love of flowers started playing in the garden with her Grandma, "helping" tend her (award-winning!) rose garden. They also had an impressive collection of orchids and bromeliads and countless other amazing plants. Not to mention a veggie garden that looked good enough to put in a bouquet.
From here Heaven made her love of flowers official, completing a cert III in floristry from Southbank TAFE in Brisbane. Since then she has worked in many different aspects of the flower world, from sales, stem processing, online flower delivery, making large custom arrangements, wedding bouquets and installations, funerals, thriving through countless Valentine’s Day’s and Mother’s Days as well as managing large teams of florists.
From here it was naturally time to start her own florist journey. In all of her work in the industry, she always felt frustrated by the outdated techniques being used that never have sustainability or the environment in mind.
Katie has had a slightly less flower-filled journey - she started out getting herself an honours degree in physics. These skills, whilst seemingly irrelevant really help on the eco-floristry journey as we constantly have to Mcguiver our way to create thoughtful arrangements because the tools and resources needed to run a sustainable florist business, unfortunately, are non-existent in a commercial sense. So the experimental nature of physics and eco floristry are surprisingly complimentary.
From here, she has taken a slight veer away from physics and is currently completing her PhD in environmental science. Her PhD is specifically looking at the best places to produce food to minimise the impact on GHG emissions and biodiversity. Having this solid foundation in environmental science, and agriculture, in particular, makes it easier on the eco-floristry journey to choose techniques and products that are truly beneficial to our environment.
Katie has always lived in a plant-filled home, and after meeting Heaven has been falling more and more in love with flowers every single day. Understanding their role in the ecosystem for all of the bugs and bees as well as their unique character, beauty and needs - it’s really a nerds wonderland.
Bare Bouquets is where both of our passions truly align and we both get to use our strengths to make thoughtful, unique arrangements and to be an active part of our local community. We love West End and we want to continue to contribute to it’s thriving culture and think that flowers are an amazing way to spread beauty and love in a world that can always use more of these things.
