Karla Smith-Brown Of OLIVEE Floral Wants To Show You How To Beautify Your Home With Spring Blooms

Smith-Brown operates her Brooklyn-based floral design studio with a keen and specific eye, specializing in seasonal flora and color theory. OLIVEE is known for its dynamic compositions, replicating the wildness of nature. Additionally, it’s dedicated to sustainability, as the studio embraces eco-friendly practices, including the use of recyclable materials and composting flower waste. 

As a first-generation Canadian of Jamaican descent, Karla has felt particularly rooted to her Caribbean heritage. After returning to Jamaica as an adult in 2018, she felt inspired by the lush surroundings of her family’s homeland in Saint Elizabeth Parish, which led her to pursue floristry full-time and name her studio after her great-grandmother, Medorah Olivee Wright. What differentiates OLIVEE aside from its stunning floral designs is that they are also a sustainable floral studio. Their sustainable practices include sourcing locally grown materials, omitting the use of flower foam and other harsh chemicals in each design, composting flower waste, and collaborating with artists who repurpose flower waste to create natural dyes.

We spoke with Smith-Brown about what she loves about florals, how to incorporate them into your home for this season and beyond, and how Black women are making their presence felt in this industry. 

ESSENCE: So, you had a passion and love for florals when you were little, and then it morphed into your safe space and later a hobby, which formed into a business. Can you speak to us about that transition? 

Karla Smith-Brown: 

Well, I always considered myself a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business at the age of 15. I was selling all-natural fruit juices outside a West Indian store. When I was 18, my best friend and I started another business that supported young entrepreneurs in the city, hosting networking events and connecting them with mentors. So I always knew that I would start another company at some point. I didn’t know what that would look like.

With flowers, since it was a new thing for me, I realized the best way to start was to get a job at a flower shop to learn. However, to launch my brand, I decided to do pop-ups. So I was just doing these bouquet pop-ups, where I would be at different cafes or boutiques. It was a way for me to engage with my customers, and it was a great marketing opportunity. I would also sell enough to cover my costs.

We want to know what your favorite florals are and why you like to specialize in them.

I’m very seasonally driven. I enjoy working with nature and appreciate collaborating with it all the time. People don’t even look up when they’re walking around New York City, so you don’t even know that you’re surrounded by beautiful nature half the time. So it’s part of my job to bring nature indoors. I love it when I make things, and then they’re using materials that people can walk down the street and see growing on the side of the road. It just feels like a full-circle moment. So, ultimately, my favorite flowers change each season. I also love unique blooms that you wouldn’t expect, things that you wouldn’t usually see in an arrangement. Right now, I am crushing on Fritillaria, which is fun. Peony season is coming. I know Peonies are basic, but we love them.

I also think of your work as distressed, in the best way – it’s abstract.

I like my work to feel unfussy. It shouldn’t feel too perfect, wild yet refined. 

This is a good segue about your studio being sustainable, and I would love to know how it is sustainable. What is your process for selecting blooms, working with farms, or collaborating with retailers that focus on sustainability?

So there are different ways. As a small business, it’s hard to check all the boxes. You know, we’re all doing the best we can, and I’m just making choices to be sustainable in the ways I can. One of the main things I do is compost everything in the studio. I partner with a composting service called Ground Cycle. They’re amazing, and they pick up bins every week. They work with several florists and restaurants in the city. I also do not use any flower foam. Flower foam is like one of the first things that I stopped using. One, it’s harmful for your body, so flower foams, that green kind of Styrofoam, okay, so it lets off little particles that you inhale, and it’s bad for your respiratory system. So it’s bad for your body, but then it does, then it doesn’t, you can’t compost it. It doesn’t break down. It just turns into more waste. So we don’t use that here. We use chicken wire, or we get creative with mechanics to build beautiful things without it. And then, yes, using a focus on seasonal and locally grown materials is always where I start. I do use tropical things and Japanese items, because sometimes they’re just gorgeous, you know. But I always start with a seasonal, locally driven palette, just because the floral industry is incredibly wasteful. 

Can you speak about how black women are starting to dominate the high-end floral space? 

I noticed it in 2020. It’s so beautiful. There are so many more black people in the market. The floral community, in general, is a very supportive one. It’s a very generous community. I’ve continuously operated under the notion that there’s enough for everybody, like the mindset that what’s for me is always going to be for me. Nobody can take that from me, so why not share the knowledge or resources I have with someone else? And that’s what I’ve received. There’s an influx of Black florists, and if I can’t do a job, I’ll pass it on to five other Black florists to see if they can do it. We’ve developed our little network and community amongst each other.

Why should people incorporate florals into their home, and how does it elevate a space?

It’s scientifically proven that it’s a mood booster. Having fresh flowers in your home immediately changes the energy of the space. The frequency of having nature elevates the energy in your space. Decor-wise, even if it’s just one type of bloom and you have a few stems, you don’t need much, but it finishes the decor of a room. After an interior designer designs a space, they’ll always add fresh flowers, it’s just an added touch. It’s a premium material, like flowers, which don’t last forever; that’s part of its beauty – it’s like an ethereal moment. 

Last question: please share some of your best floral design tips for spring for those of us who are new to floral design or are curious about it. 

Please keep it simple. If you don’t know what to get, get a bunch of the same thing. For example, if you’re at the farmers’ market, buy from there. Let’s support our farmers. Buy locally and shop seasonally. Take some chances. You know, maybe it’s something like, you don’t just want roses. It could be like a flowering branch or some fascinating foliage. There are no rules. Trust what you’re drawn to. To keep your flowers alive longer, make sure the vessel is always clean, trim the bottom of the stems, remove any leaves from the water, and change the water every other day.