Today we’d like to introduce you to Mariana Riehm.
Hi Mariana, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Lillian and I met through flowers. I was farming at the time and she signed up to receive a bucket of flowers from the farm each week. She started posting the arrangements she made with them on Instagram and I thought they were so thoughtful and artfully arranged!
I was primarily focused on growing at the time and really admired her design aesthetic. I was like, “I need to get to know this lady!” I reached out to her to set up a coffee date, which we changed last minute into a visit to a local dahlia farm to pick flowers together.
We got to chat and connect as we roamed the dahlia field collecting blooms. After that, we co-hosted several flower workshops and designed a few weddings together. On New Year’s Eve of 2018, I proposed going into business together full time and she agreed! Since then, we’ve been building the business steadily, designing weddings and events, hosting workshops, and managing our urban cutting gardens.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t know if owning your own business is ever a smooth road! It seems like there is always a challenge to navigate.
How do you do all the things?! Taxes, payroll, hiring, designing your dream website, finding ideal clients, building a studio, navigating the event industry during a pandemic. There was definitely a learning curve for us figuring out all the steps we needed to take to establish a legitimate business.
Luckily, we have an incredibly supportive community that we could lean on to help, and of course, wine.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We specialize in modern, unique, and ethereal floral design. We love incorporating interesting and unexpected elements into our work and are constantly on the hunt for something special that will make an arrangement to the next level.
It’s not uncommon for us to pull over on the side of the road to snip a beautiful seed pod, a crooked branch, or a beautifully curved patch of grass from the ditch that we find enchanting. We love working with locally grown material and are so lucky to have an amazing network of local flower farms that we can source from. We also love managing our own cutting gardens.
They are an abundant source of inspiration with an amazing mix of colors, shapes, colors, scents, and textures that are constantly evolving with the seasons. Watching a plant grow from a tiny seed and mature into a dazzling bloom is so incredibly rewarding! It can also be devastating when things go wrong and we experience a crop loss. Still, it makes each bloom that much more special.
What matters most to you? Why?
How our business decisions affect our community and the planet is very important to us. Building a supportive, dynamic and enjoyable environment for people who work with us is very important to us.
Sending beauty into the world is very important to us and we feel privileged to be able to do so. We’ve found that creating something beautiful and giving it to another human being has been a really rewarding and therapeutic experience.
We hope that our work with flowers, with their ephemeral and fleeting nature, may give someone pause, a moment to reflect on how precious and an extraordinary life is.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.ironandclayflowers.com
- Instagram: @ironandclayflowers
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ironandclayflowers
Image Credits
Anna Doshina Photography, Molliner Photography, Marston Photography, Ash Hobson, and Carr Photography
