Our Story
A little piece of the steppe
I grew up watching flowers appear like a secret.
I was born in Mongolia, where the sky takes up most of the world and the land spends most of the year holding its breath: gold, dry, and quiet for as far as you can see. But every summer, for a few impossible weeks, the steppe would forget itself. Wild iris, edelweiss, and little burning poppies would push up through the grass overnight, scattered to the horizon as if someone had spilled them from the clouds. Nobody planted them. Nobody watered them. They simply arrived, the way good things sometimes do: all at once, and without warning.
My grandmother kept a small tin cup, dented and older than my mother. On those summer mornings she would walk out from her ger and come back with it full. She never picked more than the cup could hold. The steppe is only lending them, she would say, setting it on the table where the light came in. For those few weeks our whole home smelled different. Softer. Alive. I used to fall asleep looking at that little cup and feel rich beyond measure.
We were nomads. We moved with the seasons and never stayed anywhere long enough to plant a garden, so flowers were never something we owned. They were something the land gave us, briefly and freely, and we loved them the way you love anything you know you cannot keep: completely.
When I left home I carried almost nothing with me, but I carried that. Then one grey morning, oceans away in a city full of strangers, I bought a single stem from a corner shop because it smelled faintly of those summers. I stood in the street holding it, and I cried, and then I laughed, because I finally understood my grandmother. It was never really about the flowers. It was about being handed a small, living proof that the world is still generous.
Nomadé Florals is my tin cup. Every bouquet I make is gathered the way she gathered: with care, with wonder, never more than the moment calls for, and always meant to be given. If I do it right, what arrives at your door is not just an arrangement. It is a few short weeks of a Mongolian summer, and all the love I learned there.
Thank you for letting a little piece of the steppe into your home.
Una