When a Five-Year-Old Girl Knew Her Calling

Looking at this photograph today gives me chills.

That little five-year-old girl had absolutely no idea what her life would become. She only knew how the flowers made her feel.

Joy. Beauty. Celebration. Love.

At five years old, standing underneath that flower-covered gazebo at my mom’s wedding, I remember making a decision in my little mind:

I want to do flowers. I want to be a florist.

And somehow, I never let that dream go.

Ten years later, at 15½ years old in 1995, I begged for the opportunity to work in a flower shop. I thought it would be the coolest job in the world.

That became the beginning of my professional life with flowers.

Looking back now, I have been working professionally with flowers since 1995. What started as a five-year-old girl staring in wonder at carnations and baby’s breath eventually became my career, my business, my art, and ultimately my life’s work.

I have designed flowers for weddings, celebrations, hotels, events, funerals and some of life’s most intimate moments. Decades later, I even wrote a book about what I believe I first felt underneath that gazebo:

Flowers have energy.

Before I had words for it, before I knew anything about floral design, business or becoming The Flower Doctor, I understood one simple thing:

Flowers changed the feeling of that day.

They represented happiness. They represented beauty. They represented celebration. And they made a five-year-old girl stop, stare and dream.

This photograph captured the exact moment that dream began.

Sometimes your purpose doesn’t arrive with a giant announcement.

Sometimes it’s quietly planted inside you when you’re five years old, wearing a purple dress you absolutely hate, with flowers in your hair.

And then you spend the rest of your life watching it bloom.

Jenny Barker, The Flower Doctor

Professional florist since 1995

Author of Flower Energy: Channeling the Healing Power of Blooms