Hedge Fine Blooms

Hedge Fine Blooms owner Karen Walker grew up on a Vermont dairy farm, watching her father nurture bountiful flower gardens and growing her own adoration for the outdoors. When a dear friend decided to hang up her pruning shears in 2007 and sell her Charlottesville flower boutique, Karen, who had helped out in the shop over the years, jumped in.

“I just fell in love with it,” she says. “The weddings scene started to pick up in Charlottesville and then this industry just blew up. We became this destination. And designing weddings in this area is really fun, interesting and beautiful.”
 
Fifteen years and hundreds of Charlottesville weddings later, Karen still believes that flowers connect us with the beauty of the natural world. Whether it’s through floral chandeliers, a hand-crafted ceremony arbor, statement-making centerpieces or a fairytale flower girl crown, her design team knows the right floral presence stands on its own and elevates the guest experience.
 
The cherished boutique is renowned for its chic aesthetic style, aligning with Charlottesville’s increasingly sophisticated, but still pastoral, aesthetic. When a couple decides to work with Hedge, location is foremost in the mind of Event Director Catherine Malone. The goal is to showcase a particular time and place, Catherine says. “People from all over the world are coming here to get married because they like the Charlottesville energy,” she adds. “We want their memory of the event to be rooted in this place, and flowers are a big part of that — they give clues not only to this beautiful location, but also to the season. We want them to look at their photos and know it was September in Virginia.”
 
Since every Charlottesville wedding they design is unique, Hedge floral designers love to see all the details: the dress, the ring, the invitations. Couples arrive at the studio and develop a wedding language together with Catherine, pulling in florals and color palettes that speak to them. While some arrive with binders full of Pinterest and Instagram ideas, and others with just a vague idea, the ultimate goal is to strike a perfect balance of planning and leave room for serendipitous discoveries along the way. Since Hedge works with as many local growers as possible, and “since flowers are a last-minute arrival anyway,” Catherine laughs, the team is constantly looking to see what special blooms are available.
    
Looking ahead at trends, Catherine says there’s a real focus on a kind of elevated intimacy, making sure that the guests have the kind of experiences of high-end table design and elegant flatware and linens that used to be reserved for just the couple. “Everything is more luxe, polished and one of a kind,” she says.