We felt compelled today to share why and how Floravie Design began back in 2015. For starters, we thought it would make sense to tell you where our name came from. As a landscape architecture firm rooted in strong horticultural knowledge and appreciation for our natural world, we love the word flora. As licensed professionals with a robust education (and continued education!) in the practice and history of landscape architecture, we love the word vie.

DEFINITION
flo-ra (noun)
the plants of a particular region, habitat, or geological period

TRANSLATION
French word “vie” translates to “life”
French culture and history is rich with classic examples of landscape architecture in the modern world and continues to influence global design today.

So basically… PLANTS + LIFE = FLORAVIE

Back in 2015, I was a young professional working at a landscape architecture firm in Orlando, falling in love with planting design while getting super speedy using our beloved AutoCAD. I always felt drawn to the idea of doing residential planting design and getting to work closely with my clients to fulfill their exterior desires and vision. The experience I was getting at Dix.Hite+Partners was instrumental to my career, including expanding my design capabilities to the entire South-East, but it was not the work my heart and mind craved. Thus the Floravie brainchild was born.

I began creating the vision for my company, writing business plans, developing marketing material, creating logos, and saving money. I had taken a few small residential design projects with the green-light from my employer but was not in a position to lean in 100% yet.

I was getting very close to my financial goal to bring my business fully to life and BOOM. Welcome to life in Florida… Hurricane Michael did a number on my house and tanked my savings nest egg.

That would have been really unwise to try to launch my company with no capital. So I continued to prepare and learn as much as I could. In 2017, I took a position with the talented Sally Coyle who specializes in botanical gardens and zoological habitat design. In the quick year I spent with her I furthered my horticultural knowledge to the North-East, including designing a Flamingo habitat in Boston, but more importantly she taught me how to run a business, after all it was just the two of us.

Rendering created by Kaley while employed at Coyle & Caron, Inc.

In 2018, I had an opportunity to fulfill a bucket list item of doing a nationwide road trip. So I quit my job and launched Kaley Dunlap Design, LLC (boring name I know, but I wasn’t quite ready to bring Floravie into the world). I drove all over the country in my two-door coupe with my dog Bo (you can find his bio on our About page). I was doing small residential projects back in Orlando, code compliance plans for a local engineer, and AutoCAD drafting for local firms needing to outsource some production work to make money while touring around.

The road trip landed me in Colorado in 2019, where I quickly got a job at a local plant nursery to learn the local flora of the mountainous regions. Colorado gifted me with a lot of beautiful things - time with my brother who moved out there years ago, knowledge that I am definitely a Florida native, and best of all, Zach who is now my business partner and fiance. Through the pandemic, we were able to stay employed through a variety of side-hustles including the plant nursery, a gutter cleaning business, and a connection with an online landscape design company, Tilly Design. Challenging times were easy for us to overcome, especially Zach who is a disabled combat Veteran of the United States Army.

All of 2020 taught us more than it took from us. While building a literal house together, we learned we worked well as a team and didn’t mind spending 100% of our time together. After a quick decision to move back for Florida to be closer to family and outrun the Colorado wildfires, we pursued the purchase of a plant nursery. After all, it’s in our name! That didn’t pan out as planned despite our best efforts to make it work so it was back to the drawing board. Our joint work ethic, skills, and past experience in our careers and running our own successful businesses was all the confidence we needed to officially launch Floravie Design as a landscape architecture firm.

We are proud to offer landscape architectural services for commercial and residential properties in the Greater Orlando Area.

Thanks for reading the story of Floravie Design and thank you for supporting local business.

Sincerely,
Kaley

FLORAVIE: Our Humble Beginnings