Where it all began.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of being a flower farmer or a florist. But I did grow up in a garden.

I spent my childhood alongside my mom—pulling weeds, wandering garden centers, and keeping my hands in the dirt. She loved roses, really loved them, and she noticed how I began to love them too. She encouraged that curiosity quietly and gently. When we planted my first seed together, she was planting something else as well. I didn’t know it then, but that something was already taking root.

Years later, that seed resurfaced—not in a field, but on a third-floor balcony. I grew sunflowers in bags that reached twelve feet tall, stretching past the roof of my apartment in West Town. When I moved across the city and gained a little more outdoor space, I followed instinct and turned the roof of my townhouse into a micro flower farm. Flowers don’t need permission—just care, patience, and light.

As Beau Shi began to grow, so did my sense of connection. I found community in other growers, florists, and flower farmers across Chicagoland—people building something beautiful in unexpected places. Their creativity inspired me. Their generosity shaped me. Their work reminded me that this isn’t just about flowers, but about community.

Today, Beau Shi grows in unexpected places—on rooftops, in community gardens, and across the city.

Beau Shi began with love and with loss, shaped by a mother who believed in nurturing what was beautiful. It grew from curiosity, creativity, and the joy of making something meaningful where no one thought it could exist. And it continues—one stem, one bloom, one celebration at a time.