From English High Tea to Global Flower Energy

Sometimes I pause before the shop opens. The buckets are full. The stems are quiet. The light slips through the windows like it has all the time in the world.

And I think…

Imagine being born into flowers.
Not discovering them later.
Not pivoting toward them midlife.
But growing up with petals as your backdrop and soil as your teacher.

That has been my life.

But the story does not begin in California.

It begins in England.

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The English Roots

My mother’s side of the family is from England. My grandparents, Jack and Hilda, raised me. They were my foundation, my safe place, my model for steadiness and love.

I named my son Jack for a reason.

Every summer as a little girl, I traveled to England. I can still feel the shift stepping off the plane. The air carried history. The gardens felt ancient and intentional. Beauty there was not loud. It was cultivated.

I spent my summers surrounded by the people who shaped me.

Auntie Jean.
Uncle Raj.
Uncle Jim.
Uncle Tom.
My cousins, laughter echoing through hedges and along stone paths.

And there was always tea.

High Tea in the garden. Proper china. Fresh scones. Roses climbing brick. The kind of ritual that slows your pulse. We would sit outside, unhurried, present. I wandered castles and formal gardens before I even understood what design meant. I was absorbing symmetry, romance, patience.

I did not know it then, but I was studying.

Studying structure.
Studying ceremony.
Studying how flowers frame memory.

Those summers planted something permanent in me. A reverence for beauty that is tended, not rushed. A love for gardens that feel like stories.

Years later, when I began hosting High Tea at Magical Blooms, I realized I was recreating a feeling from childhood. Not copying it. Continuing it.

My roots are not just Californian. They are English hedgerows and castle gardens. They are tea cups clinking in the afternoon sun.

Flowers were never just a business idea.

They were inheritance.

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The Garage Years

Magical Blooms began in a garage.

No spotlight. No grand launch. Just buckets, clippers, and early mornings at the flower mart. I was young, determined, and a little fearless.

What I did not know then was that flowers would become my language.

Over thirty years I have designed for first loves and final goodbyes. For apologies and proposals. For births, anniversaries, breakups, and breakthroughs.

A florist stands quietly in the most intimate moments of people’s lives.

We are invited into hospitals, churches, living rooms, weddings, funerals.

Flowers hold emotion when words cannot.

Valentine’s Day after Valentine’s Day.
Mother’s Day after Mother’s Day.
Weddings. Losses. Celebrations.

I kept showing up.

Not because it was glamorous.
Because it was true.

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The Medicine of Flowers

Some people see arrangements.

I see nervous systems calming.

When someone walks into the shop overwhelmed and leaves breathing slower, that is medicine.

When a grieving family clutches white blooms and feels even a flicker of comfort, that is medicine.

When a woman buys herself flowers and decides she deserves beauty in her life, that is medicine.

Hydrangeas taught me abundance.
Roses taught me devotion.
Sunflowers taught me resilience.
White blooms taught me peace.

Flowers shift energy. They change rooms. They alter posture. They remind us we are alive and participating in something organic and cyclical.

They are not decoration.

They are alignment.

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The Quiet Becoming

There were hard years too.

Years of fear.
Years of stretching financially.
Years of raising my son inside the flower shop, him doing homework near buckets of eucalyptus.
Years of praying through anxiety and asking for clarity.

I did not think I was building a brand.

I was building roots.

I did not think I was crafting a voice.

I was learning devotion.

The work shaped me as much as I shaped the arrangements.

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The Harvest

Now I travel and speak about flowers.

I write about floral energy.

Growers want to support my book launches. My work is distributed globally. I sit in rooms and talk about the medicine of flowers, and people listen.

It sounds surreal when I say it out loud.

The little girl who wandered English gardens and sipped tea with Jack and Hilda now stands on stages speaking about how flowers heal.

But here is the truth.

I did not chase recognition.

I chased alignment.

For thirty years I showed up. I stayed consistent. I chose integrity over shortcuts. I stayed with the soil long enough for something to bloom.

Recognition is simply what happens when alignment gets loud.

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Legacy in Bloom

When I host High Tea at Magical Blooms, I see my grandparents in the ritual.

When I design an arrangement with structure and softness, I see English gardens meeting California sunshine.

When I write about flowers as emotional support, I see the through line from childhood to now.

This is not a sudden success story.

It is a layered one.

English summers.
Garage beginnings.
Thirty Valentine’s Days.
A son named Jack.
A book born from soil and spirit.

Pretty crazy, right?

Or maybe it is exactly what happens when you are raised in gardens, honor your lineage, stay devoted to your craft, and trust that seeds planted decades ago will eventually bloom.

Some people are born with a calling.

I was born in a garden.

And I never really left.