Before starting her own floral design studio, Kelsey Ter Meer gained agricultural experience in various settings—from farming vegetables in Connecticut and rooftop gardening in Brooklyn to tending sustenance gardens in Argentina and processing walnuts on Greek orchards. Now, all of those experiences come together in Newburgh at Heart & Soil Flowers. Founded by Ter Meer in 2016, this studio specializes in personalized floral designs using locally sourced blooms. “We’re focused on being as sustainable as possible in an industry that’s often very wasteful,” says Ter Meer.
Heart & Soil offers services for a range of events—including weddings, social gatherings, media events, interior styling, and photoshoots—and works closely with clients to create arrangements that match their preferences, venue, and season. The studio’s full service offerings include a fully custom floral plan, a curated selection of flowers in a chosen color palette, and carefully selected vases and accoutrements. For smaller events, they offer small arrangements, centerpieces, bud vases, bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and select vases.
The studio has also held a variety of workshops focused on floral arrangements and nature-inspired crafting. These workshops include winter nature crafting for kids, wreath-making sessions with cocktails and wines, and floral meditations that combine mindful foraging with Ikebana-inspired floral arranging.
They’re currently expanding their team, seeking to hire for roles such as a production assistant, freelance florists, and event breakdown crew members. “We have an urban lot on Broadway—that’s our experimental side project right now,” explains Ter Meer. “It’s our fourth year growing there, and we’re hoping to hire a garden manager.”
Finally, Ter Meer is excited to have the studio participate in the second year of the Hudson Valley Flower Collective—a group formed to facilitate connections between local growers and designers. “It’s exciting for us to participate because we can access more flowers from farms than we did before and connect with a broader group of flower farmers and designers,” says Ter Meer. “It’s particularly nice because this industry is fairly competitive, and we can sometimes stay in our own little bubbles.”
Heart and Soil is located at 4 Clark Street in Newburgh and operates by appointment only.
