Today we’d like to introduce you to Cynthia Koogler and Amanda Godina.
Cynthia is a degreed horticulturist who has worked with plants for more than 10 years. Cynthia’s experience ranges from retail, wholesale, to hands-on gardening in North Texas. Cynthia’s focus with Flower Child Plants is working directly with her clients for horticultural consultations, creating designs, overseeing installs, and ongoing specialty garden programs.
“Growing up, I spent my time outdoors and in my mother’s garden. My career began in 2006 when I applied for seasonal work at a retail garden center during the spring. My passion for gardening struck me in a way no interest had before, and though I was young, I knew horticulture was meant for me. I continued working at the nursery for 6 years and during college. I loved doing garden sales at the nursery, but also enjoyed spending time starting herbs by seeds, propagating house plants, and creating containers for our customers. I was a natural born entrepreneur and so I started Flower Child Plants in 2009 and did projects for family and friends during college. While in college I worked at Green Creek Nursery doing sales with independent garden centers and landscape designers. After earning my degree in Horticulture Business from Tarleton State University I moved to Dallas, Texas where I worked at North Haven Gardens as a Container Specialist and Garden Advisor in 2012. To further my career I pursued a position as a Horticultural Supervisor at the Dallas Arboretum, where I maintained seasonal color gardens and over 80 containers. While I was at the Arboretum, I collaborated with Amanda and began to focus on Flower Child Plants again working in residential landscapes, offering horticultural consultations, and selling planted arrangements at a variety of art and farmers market around the metroplex. I left the Arboretum in 2014 to focus full time on Flower Child Plants.”
Amanda is a degreed horticulturist who has focused her career with hands-on gardening. She has worked in a variety of landscapes ranging from Southern Colorado to Texas, both indoors and out for over 10 years. Amanda’s focus with Flower Child Plants is working on site during installs, collaborating on designs, small stone masonry projects and ongoing high touch horticulture services.
“Growing up in El Paso, I spent my time in the desert hiking and mountain biking, when I wasn’t helping in my family’s small business or backyard garden. In high school, I was inspired by nature and began living a low impact lifestyle. As my inspiration grew, I started an environmental club, recycling program and organized cactus rescues and relocation from demolition sites around the city. Starting in the summer of 2005, I began working for a small landscaping company in Durango, CO; and in no time I fell in love with creating and enhancing our clients’ gardens.
While earning a degree in Horticulture business, I had the opportunity to work at a large private estate in Fort Worth, caring for their landscape and 1-acre organic fruit vegetable farm. Furthering my horticulture skills, I worked at my school’s turf grass and greenhouse research facility and restarted the horticulture department’s community garden my senior year. After graduating, I moved to Dallas in 2012 and began doing interior design and created live arrangements with Dr. Delphinium and Botany 2000. While doing interiorscaping, Cynthia and I collaborated and began working together on outdoor landscapes. We also worked together creating botanically inspired art that sold at local art markets and galleries. In 2014, I pursued my love of the outdoors and landscaping by joining Flower Child plants full time.”
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Growing your company from the ground up presents plenty of challenges. When starting our company, we had nothing financial backing us, I (Cynthia) took a complete leap of faith and jumped right in without savings, leaving a good job at the Dallas Arboretum. My partner (Amanda) already independently worked for an interiorscaping company and did estate gardening in Plano. Looking back, we could have saved money and planned out the financials better, but it was the risk we both took to find full satisfaction in our industry and personal lives’. We both were inspired from a young age to be entrepreneurs, and if we waited for the “perfect” time we may still be waiting.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We specialize in bringing urban garden spaces to life with detailed planting plans, small garden, patio, container designs and high-touch horticultural garden care.
Our services:
Horticultural Consultations- If you just need input or direction on your landscape, but prefer to do the work yourself, we offer on-site consultations. The focus of on-site consultations includes design recommendations, pest and disease identification, and cultural care of plants.
Small Landscape design & install- Flower Child Plants specializes in the smaller, more intimate garden plan & would love to design your dream landscape. We visit your property and create a custom design plan based on your lifestyle and aesthetic needs. We offer computer-generated design in addition to detailed planting plans and suggestions. For each of our projects, we properly amend your native soil to meet the needs of your desired plants. We further your success with a complimentary plant health care session, which includes: natural liquid and granular fertilizers, vitamins, soil and root stimulants.
Specialty Garden Program- For ongoing garden upkeep, we offer a specialty garden program that includes grooming, proper pruning, deadheading, light weeding, and fertilizer treatment in discussed areas. This program can run monthly, or quarterly depending on the scope and needs of your project and budget.
Container Design- We offer container design based on your needs and aesthetic. You can create a rich garden environment on a small patio or balcony with beautiful containers. We especially like to promote the use of edibles in your containers, along with perennials mixed with seasonal appropriate annuals.
Annual Color Gardens – We love to develop annual color plans that carry you through the seasons in North Texas. We design stand-alone annual color gardens along with enhancing your perennials beds with more blooms.
What sets us apart from other companies is our attention to detail and proper horticultural practices starting from the ground up. We love collaborating with clients on designs and decisions for their gardens. This process requires more time, but the results are better and we have happy clients.
Contact Info:
- Address: 9540 Garland Rd Ste 381-393
Dallas, TX - Website: www.flowerchildplants.com
- Phone: 972-861-2953
- Email: info@flowerchildplants.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flowerchildplants
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlowerChildPlants/
Image Credit:
flowerchild19 – The photo of both of us- Dallas Morning News, Amanda- blue/green hair, Cynthia- purple/orange hair,
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
