The Gilded Lily was founded in July 2026, but its roots reach back nearly 33 years. Flowers have always existed in the background of Anne’s life – small, persistent moments that offered reprieve from the chaos. A giant magnolia floating in a mug that her mom stopped to pick on a walk. Tulips emerging each spring in her neighbor’s front yard. Picking honeysuckle to extract that tiny ambrosial drop. Trips to the local botanical gardens with her dad. These moments have stayed with her, shaping the way she sees and understands plants: not simply as beautiful things, but as companions, markers of place and season and sources of connection.
Anne’s relationship with plants has taken many forms over the years, from herbalism and garden retail to landscape gardening, therapeutic horticulture, and floral design. Each experience has given her a different way of understanding plants and the people who encounter them. Anne brings that broad, lived perspective into her floral work, drawing inspiration from both natural and cultivated landscapes and allowing plants to guide the designs as much as the occasion does.
At the heart of The Gilded Lily is a desire to help bridge the gap between people and plants. Our connection to the natural world is intrinsic, yet access to plants, flowers, gardens and green spaces has often been made inaccessible through cost, city planning and racist and classist systems that have historically excluded and displaced communities from nature in their own cities. The Gilded Lily believes that beauty, nature and the experience of caring for, cultivating and being surrounded by plants should be for everyone. Once your event has concluded, The Gilded Lily offers the option to donate your flowers or a portion of them to a senior living facility, hospital, care or treatment centers, etc.
