We recently sat down for a long-form chat with Ashley, of Ashley Fox Designs, based in Minneapolis / St. Paul Minnesota. Ashley is known for her extraordinary use of color and unforgettable selection of flowers for her clients. Ever a champion of locally grown flowers, she takes inspiration from the seasons to create the most beautiful one-of-a-kind designs inspired by nature.

Ashley was generous with her time, and shared lots of wisdom about collaborating with other vendors, how she feels confident in her design style, and more about sourcing locally grown flowers. We are lucky to have her be a part of this locally grown flower community!

For more from Ashley Fox, you must follow her on Instagram and peruse the galleries on her Website.

Was floristry your first career? Tell us how you got started:

I studied horticulture in college, and then I worked as an educator at the Arboretum in Minnesota. I also worked at a floral shop for just one year. 

Working in the shop got me really comfortable with the product. I got used to handling flowers, washing buckets, sweeping, and all of the great things that a floral person should know how to do and be comfortable doing. However, I didn't really find it to be creatively rewarding, with all the bud vases and boutonnieres and different monotonous things like that. 

When I worked at the Arboretum, it was such a wonderful experience of being creative, and productive and giving to the community, because so many people would come - tens of thousands of people - through those doors. Getting to teach and educate was really rewarding.  
 
After my kids were born, I stopped working. I really felt like as much as I loved being with my kids, I needed something that creatively and socially fed me. That's when I landed on floral design. A friend of mine asked me to do her wedding flowers, and that's where it started. Her support really encouraged me to pursue this career direction. So, it was when my second born was three months old that I started my business. 17 years later, here we are.

Can you walk us through your process when beginning a new floral design or installation? Where do you begin? 

Where I usually begin with a new floral design or installation, is looking at what’s right in front of me. With every venue or private residence, or any location, I take a look at what's available in front of me, rather than trying to make something out of nothing. For example, if there's a ton of hydrangea blooming in September, then we're going to bring in a bunch more hydrangea for maybe the aisle or an installation of some kind. I make sure that whatever I'm bringing in as a floral designer aligns with what is already present, and also works well with the architecture of the space.  

Instead of just throwing flowers for flowers sake at a fireplace or mantel or, throwing them up in the ceiling just to put flowers in a ceiling, instead, take a look at the architecture of a space. I don't come from any sort of architecture background; I just appreciate good solid design bones. Then I ask myself, how do these florals emphasize the space rather than take away from it? 
 

Talk about traveling for your workshops and events. What goes into sourcing and ordering flowers for events that aren't where you live?

Putting on traveling workshops and events would be very intimidating and difficult if not for Rooted. In fact, I just shudder at the thought, frankly, of trying to do this across the country. If I was doing it on my own and I had to reach out, let's say there wasn't Rooted, and I just had to piecemeal my stuff together. Oh, my gosh - forget about it. How exhausting! But now, all we have to do is go click some buttons, and then Eleanor from The Borrowed Garden asks me what I want, or texts me and says, “Hey, go on Rooted. I just threw some more of 'this' on there”. 

And these wonderful friendships are also made. It's not just a transactional digital experience, you get people in your court. And I know I'm sounding like a sales push for Rooted right now, but I really can't begin to tell you, just how easy it is to use. If I had to think of a time that I couldn't use Rooted and I would have to create a workshop, I don't think I would do it.
 

You spoke about taking inspiration from a venue and the architecture of a location - what do you recommend when you can't see a site in person?

A site visit is ideal because that's always the best way to get a sense of a location. If I can’t visit a site before an event day, I investigate! So much is online nowadays, like photos throughout the years from any venue. For example, I will look at a venue’s Instagram from a year ago. You can even look up an area and find what wildflowers are blooming at that time of year. You can Google or search, “Northern Minnesota July wildflowers. What's blooming?” and you can figure out just by doing that investigative work what might be happening around a place at that time. I like to get a little insight into seasonality that way. 

The colors of a location, and what’s in season always inform what I'm doing. Like full stop. 

That doesn't mean I don't want to do oranges in spring. I've done that before, and I really love it. It's more of where you get your inspiration from. Maybe orange is the bride's favorite color but she's getting married in spring. So, you use an amazing Nimes ranunculus, that has these dusty, wonderful oranges and creams and peach colors and things like that. 

Taking one tiny little seed of an idea from a client or a place can just freewheel an incredible amount of creative outpouring. It's really, really fun. I think that's why I still do this job, because it's just so much fun. It's never the same client twice in the same location. It's always a different situation, a different time of year, and there's just an endless mix of things that you can do. 

When working with a client or for myself, I have settled on the concept of, I don't want to really choose my ingredients until six weeks before the event or so, which freaks people out. You're getting a hot take because I haven't said this publicly yet, --- but I feel that when you hire a floral designer, you should find somebody that truly aligns with your aesthetic, what you love, and allow them to choose the materials two months to six weeks to two weeks before the wedding. Obviously if a client wants peonies their designer should be going after peonies for them. I'm not saying to go off the rails or anything like that, but what I'm saying is that by allowing your designer to choose the seasonal product in its prime, rather than get your expectations up for something that might not be blooming or will be done blooming because of a heat wave -- we've all been there -- you allow the creative people in your wedding to do what they do best and to make the best decisions possible. The truly, truly magical moments are created when you let your floral designer choose the MVP's that week from the grower. 

Floral designers have to put their education hat on when they're meeting with clients - from the very first time. This should be in their very first conversations with clients, saying “I'm so excited for your wedding because it's right when dahlias are really at their high point... So, this is going to be a great time for x, y, z, ingredients” hyping the time of the year up, and you get clients on board and excited for the unknown rather than scared of it. I'm really trying to do that more with every client myself. I think setting those expectations with the clients is a really, really big thing. 

How do you stay current while maintaining your unique, signature style? 

That it's a good question because I think everybody is influenced by so many things. You're influenced when you go to a museum, you are influenced when you're standing at the grocery store looking at a magazine cover. You are influenced when you go on Instagram, when you're looking around at the world and how people are dressing on the red carpet. We're just influenced by so many things. And as much as I'd like to say that I'm not influenced by trends, I know that I must be in some way. Because how can you not be? I probably wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I wasn't informed in some way by trends.

But with that said, I do put the blinders on quite a bit when I'm making something for me or even a client. I'm not really thinking about anybody else but me, and if I am happy with how it looks. While I admire a lot of different floral designers around the world, I wouldn't say that I try to do what they're doing. I'm interested in their mechanics, and I'm interested in a lot of things that they're doing, but when it comes to the trend word, I just really, really feel like I'm kind of over trying to discover who I am as a designer. I'm just happy in the place that I am at right now, and that I kind of get in my own little flow out there in the studio, and I can create something that I really like, and it doesn't matter to me if somebody else likes it because I like it. As long as clients are inspired by it and I can keep doing this as a job, then that is great.

When it comes to avoiding trends, it goes back to reading the room, what does it look like? What does it feel like in the space that you're in and where you are? And does that thing that you're wanting to do make sense? And if it doesn't, then you probably shouldn't do it because it's going to look like you were trying too hard.  

And nobody wants to hear that this takes practice, by the way, but that's what it takes. There's a handful of people who seem wonderful as soon as they pick up shears and a stem, and they seem to know what to do, but that’s the exception. I just marvel at them because it's taken me 17 years to figure it out. I think the practice helps you understand what doesn't work. You have to practice, because you need to go into it knowing that you're going to fail and not thinking, “I'm going to make it perfect every time.”  

 

Collaboration seems central to your work, especially in your workshops and styled shoots. What makes for a strong partnership with other creatives like photographers, planners, and designers?  

I always like to know what the goal of the shoot is and what their intention is behind it. Do they particularly love this venue? Do they want to work with a certain, special ingredient? Do you love the look of this or that? Working with planners and photographers involves a creative language that you develop with practice. 

As a designer, you really want to make it as easy as possible for that planner or photographer to work with you. That means setting very, very clear easy to understand explanations of what you're going to bring to the project. Whether it’s a wedding or a styled shoot, making sure that you're very professional in your conversations and in your emails. It may sound like an outdated system because we text and DM so much these days, but I find that small details fall through the cracks and get missed when there's a lot messaging here and there going on. My advice is to keep things professional as you develop relationships with vendors. When you're dealing with big budgets, and everybody’s time, you want to make sure that you're being clear about what the end product is going to look like and what you're bringing to the table.

It’s important to say, “I'd love to do this project with you, please let me know how much you want from me as a designer to interject any sort of ideas about texture or color into the rentals.” Because maybe they just want you to bring the florals that day, but often times, other vendors want that conversation. They don't just want no contact and not talking about it. 

With every planner and every photographer, the conversations are always different, but when it's from you, it should always be a consistency of organized ideas. Because only in the organization can you be creative on site. You cannot waste time on site trying to be organized. If you try to do that, the shoot or the project is going to fail. It's important on the front end to be that organized vendor so that in the moment when things happen on the day that you're not anticipating - because you can't anticipate everything -- you have to be able to make those wise decisions. You can't do that if you're trying to be organized.

What do you hope participants take away from your workshops?

Well, I always hope that there's these little light bulb moments that resonate beyond the workshop day. It's a hope of mine that what participants paid for in time and energy and their hard-earned money, that the things we cover resonate with them. I hope that what we talk about stays with them and that they can take the ideas back with them and use them in their own business practices.

I think also what I've said in the past is that just learn to fail and take it in stride. Don't worry about it. Don't fret over it. But take notes. Don't just forget about it. But also, don't kick yourself for it because that's just going to happen.  

On the front end of workshops, I always do a survey, and I ask them what they want to learn. So, I make sure I tailor the workshop to the people who are taking it that day. Instead of “ok, today, we're going to talk about how to hire freelancers.” But maybe nobody wants to learn how to do that. Maybe they've got that figured out. So, I always ask a lot of questions, and those questions always fill up the time we have together. It's never really my agenda for a workshop day - it's more of a what do you guys want to know?  

Talk about the rise of local flowers:

The local flower scene has gotten a lot bigger. When I first started doing  flowers I had to search to find farmers in my area. Yes, there were some places to go... to try to find somebody who is willing to sell to you and also who has enough of a specific product. It was hard to find farms that 1) were close enough to drive to but 2) do they even have anything I want or need for my event? I would drive for hours and hours trying to find farms, even just to get two buckets of something amazing. I’d laugh to myself, “did I just drive three hours round trip to get like three buckets of dahlias?” 

I really feel like the rise of local floral goes back to the style that was on the rise in the mid 2000s - around 2008. Right around the time I started doing flowers as a career, there was this tiny little pivot from the tighter shape of floral, which, hothouse flowers do a nice job of conforming to because they're so kind of tight and rigid themselves to this more garden style. Think Constance Spry a la the 1930s. She wrote a book about floral design and it was very much towards the garden aesthetic.  

Then social media allowed us to find one another, meaning farmers, but also other floral designers. I was able to look at designers in New York and California and their garden-forward design style. And I thought, “That's what I've been doing. That's what I've been picking out of my garden.” But I could only make 1 or 2 designs with my garden grown product. And yet people were asking me to do full weddings with those garden style designs, and I'm like, “Well, I can make you two... I can do two”. 

But now through Rooted, it's an extraordinary feeling because it just opens you up to farmers across the whole United States. It’s so great for the farmers too, because I always felt so bad for them because they were spending so much time on admin, texting with me, I always kept apologizing because I'm Midwestern and I was just like, “I'm so sorry. I keep asking you for different things. It's too bad there isn't one way to do this more easily: to show me what you have and then how I can go about buying it.”

HUGE thanks to Ashley for for taking the time to chat with us, AND for championing locally grown flowers. Be sure to check out her website & follow along for tons of floral inspiration on her Instagram.