local & natural

Florestina today is a small family business creating wedding & event flowers, seasonal bouquets, and floral greetings cards.

Suzie tries to work in an environmentally conscious and sustainable way, her designs are oasis free and she purchases the majority of her flowers locally, using both Irish and British flower farmers, as well as growing an increasing number of flowers herself.

Just as we are increasingly conscious as to how and where our food is produced, so too with flowers. For an industry that revolves around plants, floral design is surprisingly ungreen.

How it all started..

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of being in a perpetually sunny, warm, walled garden with herbaceous borders, climbing roses and a beautiful old conservatory which was filled with scented geraniums, vivid vibrant fuchsias and exotic mottle leafed begonias.

Beyond the walled garden lay the beech woods overlooking the sea which in Spring were carpeted with bluebells, primroses and wood anemones...

....It was a veritable horticultural playground and although sadly the walled garden exists only as a memory, and it wasn't always sunny, the seeds were sown (...pun intended) for a lifelong love of flowers and plants, so to speak.

"..And then the woodland garden itself, which burst into life in the spring with the brilliant intense colours of the Rhododendrons set amongst the towering trees.."

the beginning of florestina

In the mid 2000’s I was working for a musical theatre youth charity and when we put on a show I loved creating flower arrangements for the productions and sponsor's receptions. I had the opportunity to work in some of the most beautiful theatres and venues across Ireland .

Being a charity, and operating on a shoestring, there was never a budget for flowers but they say necessity is the mother of invention and I relished the challenge to be inventive and creative. Huge urns with masses of foraged foliage can make such an impact for very little outlay....

...And for one event in an old industrial warehouse I remember scouring the derelict docklands of the titanic quarter for self seeded buddleja and ragwort which i displayed in massed rows of tin cans set on old reclaimed bricks.

It taught me about how to make an impact with mass & scale and its something I always have in the back of my mind when designing.

It was at that event that someone asked me if I ‘did’ flowers as a business and up until that moment it hadn’t occurred to me that I could, but later I realised that here was the artistic outlet for my creative spirit, and the catalyst was being asked soon afterwards by a good friend if I would do the flowers for her daughter's wedding. Most of the flowers came from their own garden or were donated by generous friends and I just loved every minute of it.

From that wedding word of mouth brought in more weddings and events, and so in 2014 Florestina came into being. This has since been followed by further training with the Covent Garden Academy of Flowers in London and Sabine Darrell in Herefordshire.