A story of two passions becoming one.
When a qualified interior designer becomes a qualified florist, a space is created for something special.
An innate love of design
I come from a family of designers. My father was a graphic designer, my mother a garden designer, my brother is still a talented industrial designer. Growing up, design wasn't a career idea so much as the family language, and mine was always going to be spoken with my hands. I'm dyslexic, and while I loved interiors enough to complete my qualifications in interior design, I knew I needed a craft where the designing happened in the real world, not on a screen.
Then, in February 1998, a friend called needing help in her flower shop for the busiest week of the year. On the run into Valentine's Day, I innocently walked in on the 7th February thinking I was doing her a small favour. However, I was quickly shown the deep end floristry. I still fell completely in love, completed my qualifications in floristry while working the bench, and I've never spent a day outside this industry since.
That makes me somewhat rare in Australian floristry. I'm a qualified interior designer who became a qualified florist. My floristry was built on my interiors training, not alongside it, and it changes everything about how I design.
The immutable interiors training
When floristry and interior design merge, something happens that neither craft manages alone. I don't just see the flowers, I see the room they're walking into, the linen, the chairs perfectly placed, the lighting, the ambience, and then the flowers as the finishing element that pulls it all together. Be that an automotive dealership, or a superyacht.
It's given me an eye for floristry I can't switch off. Proportion, palette, and the way a bouquet sits in a space all matter greatly to me. Every arrangement we make is designed with it, because every arrangement ends up living in an interior, a home, an office, an event space, and eventually, someone's heart.
When it came time to build our Prahran flagship, I worked side by side with a talented architect, Nick Harding, to design the space itself. Vogue Living kindly wrote it up. The interiors thread has never been decoration to me. It's the discipline underneath everything.
Melbourne, and only Melbourne
I arrived in Melbourne in 2002 and started at the wholesale end of the flower trade, learning the market from the growers' side. The relationships I built there have now been growing for more than twenty years, and they're why the best of each season makes its way to our studio first.
Kate Hill Flowers followed in 2007. It's important to note that we're not a national network with a Melbourne branch. We're one passionate studio, dedicated to one city, with more than two decades of understanding of how Melbourne celebrates, marries, says thank you and says goodbye. Though our weddings have carried us further afield, from as far south as Tasmania, to tropical islands in the north, Melbourne is, and always will be our home.
From single stems to elite events
My career has taken me from a single hand-tied posy to luxury brand openings featuring tens of thousands of orchid stems, a black-on-black dinner party in a Grand Prix pit, a prime minister's farewell at the NGV, and styling flowers for superyachts. We look after many local and international celebrities, which is always fun, however we don't name names, and that's precisely why they keep coming back.
Growing up on the bench
There is no maternity leave in this business. Both my girls came to work at barely two weeks old. My first was strapped to my chest while we set up in the Birdcage for Spring Carnival, the Jon Stevens and band rehearsing behind us. They have grown up on the studio bench, making their first posies beside me. Family-run isn't a line we put on the website, it's our lifestyle.
My passion lives
I'm still heavily involved in ordering and managing the business every day, including picking up the phone to take orders, much to people's surprise. I still read the card messages too; it's how we understand what an order really means, and some of them get me badly. Funeral flowers most of all, I consider creating someone's final flowers the greatest honour in this job, and I have never once finished a casket design without stopping for a moment.
That's what you're getting when you order from us, not necessary a bouquet from a catalogue, but something I'd always be proud to send myself.
Kate x
Come and say hello
440 City Road, Southbank VIC 3006
Monday–Friday 9am–5pm · Saturday 9am–2pm
(03) 9510 8800