Goodbye Bhakti, Welcome Wildscape
Bhakti Flowers is now Wildscape Floral Co.
Same hands behind the bouquet, different name. Why the change? Bhakti is a Sanskrit word that means devotion. From the start, this business has been devotional. I learned about the word bhakti in my yoga teacher training, it was like someone had finally given me a word for all of the things that I was feeling and it was both incredibly relieving and exciting to know that I wasn’t alone in my thought process. I was able to put all of the feelings I had towards growing and working with flowers into one word: Bhakti. I was ready to devote my time, energy, sweat, tears, blood and being into this thing that I so deeply needed to do.
The way that I understand Bhakti is devotion to a higher purpose, a higher thing, something much bigger than you that you will never be able to truly fathom. For me, that’s plants. That’s perennial peony roots that stretch their pink necks above the soil in spring, it’s the soft doormat that leaves create in the fall, it’s the sweetness of sap stuck to your fingertips. The entire circle of nature was and continues to be, absolutely overwhelmingly vexing and fantastic to me. Something truly worthy of devoting my being to.
My conviction doesn’t change with this name change. I will still put the same amount of heart into all my work. I certainly hope to always be brought to tears by the first push of tulips each spring, and I aim to bring that wonder and appreciation into each piece I design.
But when it comes down to it, Bhakti Flowers is a business, and most people can’t spell it. Most people can’t pronounce it. Most people don’t know where to put the h. Most people can’t really tell what I’m saying when I speak the word out loud. It’s confusing, in a place where the name of your business really shouldn’t cause confusion. In addition to the confusion behind the word itself, it doesn’t feel right using a Sanskrit word as a white woman. Cultural appropriation exists enough in yoga culture already, and I’d like to participate in that as little as possible.
Enter Wildscape. I read this word on a website somewhere in the Spring of 2019. I immediately wrote the word on a sticky note and affixed it to my water bottle, where it rode around with me for months. Now, March 2020, the sticky note is on my fridge. I’m shocked that people understand me when I say the word. There’s no hidden h. It’s an English word, and maybe most importantly it immediately speaks to the nature of my work.
From the beginning I was trying to work the word wild into my business. As my own person, my wildness has been a trait that I have loved and nourished in myself. It’s a large part of my design style with florals, I will never design something that doesn’t pull from the wildness of nature.
Bhakti will always be a part of my life, now it doesn’t have to be a part of my business. Goodbye Bhakti, Welcome Wildscape. Thank you so much for being here, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.