There’s just something about autumn.
The light softens, the mornings carry that first whisper of woodsmoke, and the garden, tired from a long summer of giving, finally exhales. And here I am — exhaling with it. Mi
Eight years.
I had to say it out loud this morning, standing at the kitchen sink with that glorious first cup of morning coffee, just to let it sink in. Eight years since Flora in the Wild first began… since I gathered up my courage and a bucket of blooms and quietly stepped into a life I wasn’t at all sure I was ready for.
It still surprises me how it all started. Not from a grand plan or a clever business model, but from the rubble of a season that quite truly undid me. I was newly separated, mama to three girls, and the only thing that felt steady in my hands was a stem. I have written about that tender, unraveling time before, about how floristry became something to hold onto when everything else felt like it was falling apart, and even now, eight years on, I find I am still gently unpacking what those early days gave me.
Mostly, they gave me this.
Three homes, three gardens, one slowly steadying heart
If I close my eyes, I can walk through each of them. The first garden, where the business was born in amongst young children, rebuilding my life and a quiet kind of grief I had no name for yet. This was the biggest, most ambitious and wholly unsustainable one for that stage of life. Then came a time where I learned (rather reluctantly) to sit in the stillness and let things grow at their own pace — that strange, holy season I once called the in-between, where nothing happens externally and instead you must go inward… I lingered there for quite a while. And now this one… my little blue bach by the sea, with its wild fruit forest and its old gnarled trees and the regal Kereru keeping watch over it all. The place where everything I have learnt over the years is finally coming into practise in the best possible way.
Three homes. Three sets of soil. Three completely different versions of me kneeling in them.
I sometimes wonder what the woman in that first garden would make of the one I am creating now. I think she would cry, honestly. Not sad tears — the other kind. The kind that come when you realise you made it through, even when you were sure you wouldn’t. I owe her so much, that earlier version of me. She kept showing up with her dreams and wild optimism when life kept knocking her backwards… and she didn’t know it yet, but she was planting more than flowers.
She was planting a life that would embrace the essence of who she has always been.
This new chapter feels different, and I want to be honest about it. I am not planting acres. I am not chasing the version of Flora in the Wild I once thought I had to build. This time, I am planting on a smaller, quieter scale — and that, for me, is the whole point.
A little flower patch. A little studio. A beautiful community, a little less of the noise, and a lot more of the things that make my heart slow down in the very best way. My girls are bigger now and I find I am more available to the flowers than I have ever been. Or maybe more available to myself. I’m not always sure which one comes first. There is a freedom in finally letting the business be the right size for the life. Not the other way around.
May in the Bay of Plenty is one of my favourite secret seasons. Everyone thinks the garden goes to sleep, and parts of it do, gratefully….but underneath, the most important work is happening. The overwintering work. The slow, patient, faithful work.
This week I have been tucking in the seedlings that will carry me through to spring. Snapdragons in soft, painterly colours. Stock, because nothing on this earth smells quite like a stem of stock cut on a cool morning. Ammi, that frothy, lacey thing I cannot help but plant in every garden I’ve ever owned. Anemones and ranunculus’ those beloved little corms soaking patiently on the kitchen bench like they always do. And then the bulbs… customer favourites Tulips, daffodils going in for the girls, and freesias that will perfume the whole studio come September.
Cold-tolerant, brave little things. They don’t mind the chill. In fact, they need it. They put their roots down quietly all winter long, building strength in the dark, so that when spring comes they are ready — really, truly ready — to bloom.
I think about that a lot these days.
What the soil keeps teaching me
There is a particular kind of joy in starting again with soil and seedlings. A joy that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it. It’s in the smell of damp earth on your fingers, the soft give of a punnet as you lift it free, the impossibly tiny taproot of a snapdragon no bigger than an eyelash. You hold something so small and so determined in your hand and you remember… oh. This is how everything has ever begun.
Small. Quiet. Hopeful. In the dark.
Eight years ago I had no idea what I was doing. I had lost my way and yet I had a head full of dreams and a stubborn, stubborn belief that flowers could carry me somewhere softer. They did. They have. They still do.
And so, as I head out to water the seedlings this morning , gumboots on, hair up, the sea breathing in the background — I just wanted to come here, to this little corner of the internet, and say thank you. To every person who has ordered a bunch over these eight years. To every bride who trusted me with her day. To all of the beautiful people I have met at my workshops. To everyone who has read these diary entries and quietly written back to tell me a piece of their own story too.
You have been part of every garden.
This one is only just beginning, and oh, I can’t wait to show you what comes up.
With soil under my nails and a heart that is steadier than it’s ever been,
Shirelle x
Come find me over on Instagram @florainthewild — I’ll be sharing the seedlings as they grow.
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