We think of flowers for school dances, weddings, Valentine’s Day and to fill our gardens with each spring and summer. While seemingly a small detail, some moments in life just wouldn’t be complete without a floral arrangement. At Garden Bouquet and Design they’re filling each of life’s moments with flowers of intention and connection.
Garden Bouquet and Designs creates custom designed, one of a kind floral arrangements for the Marquette community.
“We get to know our customers pretty well and what they want, so they’re not ordering something online that they don’t have any connection to. Nothing is ever the same,” said Maggie Finwall, co-owner of Garden Bouquet and Design. “We use different textures. We work with different metals, crystals, stones and wire them into our bouquets. I think the energy over all of our businesses is very interactive, very heart driven.”
Garden Bouquet has been a local business for over a decade now, but new owners Maggie Finwall, DJ Finwall and Abby Mason took over ownership just last year.
Their business intention is not only to create beautiful floral arrangements, but ones that reflect the connections between their customers. With each arrangement designed, Maggie aims to leave her mind and let her art form convey the emotions behind the flowers being given, she said.
“Let your mind break out of its box. It doesn’t need to look a particular way, but it does need to feel a particular way. That’s the most important part about designing,” Maggie said. “To really let your mind go and let your heart direct you. Tapping into that, that in itself is an art form.”
Garden Bouquet aims to share this creative process with the community through their various workshops including wreath arrangements, centerpiece designs, flower crown making and more. The workshops are a way for the owners to offer tricks of the trade, but their main goal is to get those in attendance to connect with what they’re attempting to create, Maggie said.
“You’re arrangement is the canvas and your flowers are the paint,” she added.
Floral arrangements aren’t the only art form offered by Garden Bouquet. The owners run two side businesses as well. The Crones’ Nest, operates within Garden Bouquet and brings an apothecary line as well as the owners other interests into the shop. Reiki energy healing sessions, which focus on repairing and balancing one’s energy, tarot card readings which can be used to illuminates one’s path of life, and sound healing sessions which can induce relaxing and meditative states are all among the other offerings of Garden Bouquet.
The shops latest business venture is Earth Heart Gardens, which is run by DJ and will be beginning its first season shortly. The goal is to take urban spaces and turn them into productive spaces through flowers and landscape design, DJ said.
“Not only can those spaces be productive and functional, I hope and intend on them creating beautiful and aesthetically pleasing places and spaces to cultivate a joy and connection with their property just through interaction,” DJ said. “It’s not just about what people want those flowers to look like, but really trying to embody the essence or creative energy of the person that we’re building these flowers for whether or not they are a patient in the hospital or your 87-year-old grandmother who has some spunk and funk and wants something cool and not just a tight knit mound of flowers.”
Coming from a field focused on farming and sustainability, DJ was apprehensive about exploring the floral side of gardening at first, but during his time at Garden Bouquet, and learning to design and create with flowers, he has found a new appreciation for the art, he said.
“As a female dominated business I found a lot of unexpected joy and support coming in and starting to design. There’s a lot of subtleties that need to be appreciated in order to really understand that yes, this is going to die and it’s that much more beautiful because it is fleeting,” DJ said. “It might seem as though throwing together a bouquet is as simple as putting stems in a vase, but until you start to do it there’s a lot of challenges and problem solving to utilize that make the process more intensive. There are creative processes to go through and ways to begin and ways to end.”
The premise of Garden Bouquet and Design may be to provide beautiful floral arrangements for every occasion, but their main goal is to come in each day with happiness and laughter and to spread those smiles with each person who comes through the door, Maggie said.
“None of it matters if you’re not doing that,” she said.
For more information on workshops or the shop visit garden-bouquetmqt.com.
