Have you ever visited the San Diego Rose Garden in Balboa Park?

Nestled within Balboa Park, the Rose Garden is one of my personal sanctuaries. Whether I’m seeking solitude or sharing a moment with a loved one, the enchanting aroma of roses envelops me. My love for these blooms runs deep, so I have a rose tattoo on my shoulder.

Wildflower Child
My journey with flowers began not with roses, but with wildflowers. Summers spent at my grandmother’s house in Pennsylvania were filled with carefree days among fields of dandelions, chasing fireflies until twilight. Back then, roses never caught my eye. In high school and college, I preferred the simplicity of wildflowers, often asking my boyfriends to pick them for me. They would present them in old spaghetti jars as tokens of affection on Valentine’s Day. To me, roses were for sophisticated women, and I identified more with the untamed beauty of wildflowers.

I was a country girl, wild and free, and saw myself reflected in those fields of wildflowers. The idea of comparing myself to a rose seemed foreign. Then one day, my mother remarked on how much I had matured, suggesting that I now possessed the refined beauty of a rose. We laughed, and I agreed, but with a caveat: I still held the spirit of a wildflower. That conversation has stayed with me and inspired the tagline for my Blooms and Alchemy products: “The Elegance of a Rose with the Spirit of a Wildflower.”