I grew up in Colombia, where biodiversity and flowers are woven into the rhythm of everyday life, long before I ever thought of them as a career.

Life took me elsewhere first: into corporate finance, then into brand and product development for UK consumer businesses, building a foundation in both strategy and storytelling. But it was a much harder season that brought me back to growing plants: the pandemic, years of IVF, the sudden loss of my father. What started as a simple distraction became something I couldn't have planned, a way of rooting myself again, one bloom at a time.

Working with flowers gave me the space to process and heal. As I tended the land, it tended me back, restoring a sense of balance, fertility, and wellbeing I didn't know I'd lost.

That journey led me to train as a beekeeper in Essex, deepening my connection to the land and its pollinators, and to complete my wine studies with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), exploring how wine, like flowers, brings people together. These threads wove themselves into Beyond the Bouquet®: a place where flowers, wine, nature, and human connection come together.

My husband, Andrea, is part of this too. His training in horticulture with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) shapes our growing practices, always working with nature, not against it.

I am so glad you're here.
With love, Maria