I will be honest with you. The little girl part of me was jumping up and down over this one.
This was a moment where I stepped outside my comfort zone, asked if she would say yes, and she did.
Sarah Campbell is the creative force behind Intrigue Designs. Large-scale installations that are genuinely mind-numbing to look at. Television. Teaching all over the world. She has built a career that blends creativity, entrepreneurship, and a real down-to-earth humanity underneath all of it.
What I appreciate most about her journey is the reminder that success in flowers is not just about designing beautiful arrangements. It is about taking risks, embracing opportunities, staying curious, and continuing to evolve as your business grows.
Here is what we talked about.
She Started as a Planner Because a TV Show Was Bad
This is my favorite origin story I have heard in a while.
Sarah launched her planning firm when nobody would hire her, and she did it on a whim. She had watched a wedding planner show on TLC, and the planner was terrible. Her thinking went: if that is the best in this industry and she is on TV, I can absolutely do this.
So the next day she launched her planning firm and figured it out as she went.
By her own account, she was a terrible planner. She did not care if anyone was on time, whether there was food, or what the directions said. She only cared how pretty the space was. And she started as a budget planner, which meant the spaces were not even that pretty. Folding chairs, Elks Lodges, bingo halls, church basements.
A few years in, she got the chance to launch the floral side of the business, and that was the thing. That was it.
The honest answer about why she switched
I asked what her aha moment was, and she gave me two answers. The one everyone wants to hear, and the real one.
The real one: the money was better. It was more consistent. She made bigger chunks as a planner, but the repeat florist clients created steady revenue, and she saw it as a financial opportunity.
She said that with a little hesitation, because in the flower world there is this belief that you should do this because you love it and not for the money.
Her question, and mine: why can't it be both?
You still want groceries on your table. And honestly, most of us want more than just groceries.
The Gatekeeping Conversation
This is the part I keep thinking about.
Sarah teaches hands-on workshops that cost close to $4,000 to attend, where she walks people through luxury mechanics, structures, and designs. And then she also shares those same mechanics openly on Instagram.
When she first started sharing online and teaching, there was real frustration and pushback from within the floral industry. The sentiment was that this knowledge belonged to the industry, not the general public. She kept going anyway because it felt right.
The fear underneath gatekeeping is that if you share something, nobody will buy it from you.
Her response: if that were true, nobody should ever come to her workshops.
But a 30 or 60 second Instagram post is not the same as being in the room. When you are there in person, absorbing the energy, seeing the connection, watching someone course correct in real time, that is a completely different experience. As she put it, days together give you so much more than seconds.
I feel this from the teaching side too. When you are standing next to someone and you see a mistake forming, you can say, pinch the wire this direction instead, and it will hold the stem differently and stop it from spinning. There are so many tiny details like that. They do not survive a video.
She also does not think social media has made our industry less creative. Just the opposite. Ten or fifteen years ago, clients came in with cutouts from magazines. Little snippets. You never saw the whole event, the energy, the personality. Now you can see all of it, and you can follow the trail back to the creatives and small business owners who made it happen.
What has changed is that the questions are allowed now. She told me that if you had asked another florist how they made something ten years ago, they would have been offended. A hundred percent offended.
Practicing Under Real Pressure
Sarah's Intrigue Across America tour workshops are set up like actual weddings.
There is a hard deadline. Real models, not real brides. Real photographers waiting in the wings. Real planners making changes and telling you when something needs to be redirected.
You get all of the real-life pressure without the fear of ruining someone's actual wedding day.
That is the part she credits with helping designers grow. They get to stand in the pressure and discover that it is okay. You can make a mistake. You can shift it. You can adjust. It can start raining ten minutes before the ceremony and you can still pull off something beautiful.
I think about this constantly with our styled shoots. That is our space to practice and to say, wow, I would never do it that way again.
And weather really is the ultimate leveler. I will have someone with a gorgeous vision for an outdoor event on the water, and we have to talk honestly about wind before we talk about anything else.
Sarah made me feel better about something, too. People do not think of Maryland as a hot, humid place, but on the Eastern Shore we are surrounded by waterways. She has had friends come up from New Orleans and Florida who said it felt hotter here.
So when someone asks for tulips in July: first, sourcing that is not happening. Second, you are going to melt. And so are they.
How She Ended Up on The Big Flower Fight
Short version: right place, right time, and a year of absolute craziness that came before it.
In 2018 she ran her first national tour, hosting workshops in collaboration with Styled Shoots Across America. The plan was all 50 states. They made it to 42, which she still counts as a win, and I agree with her.
That same year she was doing full-scale weddings. Not small ones. She had closed her warehouse and moved the entire operation back to her home on the Eastern Shore, pulling the furniture out of the first floor and working out of the house and garage.
Her weekly schedule that year:
- Sunday night: pack up, fly to a new city
- Monday and Tuesday: teach workshops
- Tuesday: wholesale flowers ship back to the home studio, where a team processes and preps
- Wednesday: fly back to Maryland
- Thursday and Friday: design
- Saturday: install
- Sunday: get up and do it all again
For about a year. An hour from the airport.
She also mentioned, almost in passing, that she nearly quit her entire career that year. Not recommended, in her words.
When the tour ended, she promised her assistant they would take three months off, and they actually put it in the schedule. August, September, and October. Blocked. No events. Which in the wedding industry is unheard of, and October especially is a little wild.
Meanwhile, a casting director was searching for an American florist who was available in August, September, and October to film.
She got an Instagram DM first, which she ignored, because a DM saying "I have an opportunity for you, can you give me a call" is spam ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Then an email came. Then her phone started lighting up, because people all over the floral industry had told the casting director the same thing: I am not available, you need to call Sarah Campbell.
That is what a network built on generosity actually looks like.
The chicken wire moment
Casting wanted her to bring another florist. She called every flower friend she had, and nobody was free on that timeline. Most of them have families and commitments to clients and to their people.
So her assistant Jordan pitched herself directly to casting, and they jumped at it. Jordan had been with her for the entire 2018 tour, wedding after wedding.
Here is the thing Sarah forgot: Jordan does not do flowers. She sweeps floors, lifts buckets, handles recipes and confirmations and logistics. She came to Sarah straight out of college with no floral experience.
Day one on set, Jordan asked her how to cut chicken wire. Sarah looked at her in complete shock.
So every single week of that competition, off camera, she was teaching Jordan a private workshop on whatever they were about to do. That takes an enormous amount of energy while you are also competing.
She says she would do the whole thing again with Jordan. She would just teach her a lot more things first.
I told her honestly, none of that came across on screen. They worked together beautifully.
Why the traditional florists struggled
Sarah had a theory about this that I found interesting.
Some of the more traditional florists on the show did not last as long, and she thinks it came down to training. They were taught a traditional, more analytical way of thinking about flowers.
She had spent years building processes for creating large-scale designs with small teams and limited support, which is everything she teaches now. So when the show turned out to be giant garden sculptures rather than the wedding work she expected, she already had the adaptability.
They wanted a beetle to look like a beetle. In floristry, things get to be abstract and natural and whimsical. That was a shift.
What She Sees Working Around the World
Sarah has taught internationally, and I asked what is different.
The names of flowers are not the same everywhere. She learned this on set, looking for a specific flower while everyone stared at her blankly. In Europe, growers and designers often use the Latin name.
The mechanics differ. Floral products are sold worldwide, but not the same products in every market. She did not bring tools with her to England, and the adhesive available there behaved completely differently from what she was used to. So she was learning new mechanics while simultaneously figuring out enormous structures on a competition timeline.
The community culture differs. What she has heard repeatedly from florists outside the US is that the American floral community is empowering, encouraging, and genuinely connected, while some other regions remain more buttoned up and keep to themselves. She thinks that is starting to change.
The Part About Burnout
I asked her about a recent trip, assuming she had been at a flower show.
She told me that the previous week she had been in full burnout. She sat in her garden. She sat in the pool. The social media posts that went up that week were reshares.
And then she told me our conversation was the first interview she had done coming out of it.
I thanked her, and I meant it.
People look at this work and think, it is flowers, it is pretty, it is fun, you must have the best job in the world. And some days you are just fried. It is not that you are tired of the flowers. It is the constant go. Run, run, run.
In any industry, but particularly this one, we burn out, and we have to take the reset time.
Before the burnout week, she had been in England for a flower show, where she met up with friends from the competition and saw work that is far more sculptural than what we typically see in the US. Giant dragons and tigers and aliens made of flowers. Which explains a lot about how well the UK teams did on that show.
Then she went to the Netherlands to scout for the November retreat.
The Retreats
Their first international retreat was in Ireland last year.
Everyone met at a top secret location in Dublin and boarded a coach together. They explored the Irish countryside, had lunch in an old Irish pub, and then arrived at a castle that was theirs alone for three days. Workshops, galas, lunches, flowers, photographers.
The Netherlands retreat follows the same shape, different country. Twenty florists from around the world will meet in Amsterdam at a location shared only with them, tour an architectural wonder, and visit a flower breeding farm, which is even better than a flower farm because you get to see how a new variety comes into existence from the very beginning, then work hands-on with those blooms.
They have booked out an entire historic estate, a property originally built centuries ago for botanical study and since restored into a luxury retreat. Formal dinners with fellow florists and planners and photographers, more workshops, and a final day spent actually getting into the culture of the place before everyone returns together.
When Sarah picked the location, Jordan asked her whether anyone would even want to go to the Netherlands. Who goes there?
Tickets sold out in about 33 minutes.
For florists, that is the flower destination. Of course they wanted to go.
What Excites Her Now
Two things, besides flowers.
Her granddaughter, first and most. Raising children is its own kind of fun and also so much work. The real reward, she says, is getting to be a grandmother, because you get the fun parts, and when you do step into the challenging parts, it is because you are helping your own child.
And professionally, watching designers come through her community and build businesses that go far beyond what she built. She described it as a thought process shift, a directional shift, and being part of that journey.
One story stuck with me. The very first person to ever message her about a result sent a photo of a signed contract for a five-figure wedding, with a note that it was just the deposit. It was a team of two who had attended a single workshop and had only done a handful of weddings before. They shifted their mindset and pitched an event at a level they had never touched.
What We Get Right, and What We Do Not
What the floral industry gets right: the hustle. You cannot survive in this work without it. We schlep buckets and boxes and bags of compost and trash. We may love what we do, but we outwork most industries.
Though we both agreed that caterers have it harder. They do everything we do, and then they stay client-facing for the entire event. Once the event starts, we go home and put our heads down. They do not. Ultimate hustle.
What we need to improve: pricing clarity.
Sarah said it is genuinely difficult for a client shopping for a florist, because they have no idea what it is going to cost. And she does not have a clean answer, because it is such a moving target. Flower pricing shifts constantly. Interestingly, she has found it fairly consistent across the US regionally, and somewhat cheaper internationally.
I struggle with the same thing from the growing side, and it is worth explaining why.
Take zinnias. I plant a seed, grow the plant, and cut from that same plant repeatedly all season. Now take a snapdragon. I get one really good stem and maybe a couple of smaller side shoots. Those are two completely different pricing structures before you even factor in labor, seed cost, maintenance, and upkeep. And then wholesale enters the picture, because when someone needs calla lilies and mine are not ready, I am special ordering those in.
Then add shortages and crop failures on top.
Pricing is a constant tweak, in every corner of this industry.
Dodge and weave
Sarah's phrase for it: you have to be able to dodge and weave. If something does not come in right, you still have to show up and make the event happen without the flower you were counting on.
She told me about a wedding roughly a decade ago where twelve bags of smilax never shipped. Her supplier had sold out and simply forgot her order, and she found out with about 24 hours to go. She called her gardener and had him decimate an acre-long run of bushes at her own house to cover chandeliers and an entire stage backdrop.
She says those bushes still have not fully recovered.
I have had the same panic over ruscus. You need it very specifically for a look, it is suddenly not there, and you pivot.
Her Message to Florists
I asked what she would want every florist to hear.
Put your mind in the right place. When you walk into anything, a workshop or any new learning, arrive with the mindset that you are going to absorb, you are going to learn, and you are going to implement it when you get home.
If you show up in the right mindset, you will grow more than anyone else.
Where to Find Sarah
You can find Sarah on Instagram at @intrigue_teaches for her educational work and @intrigue_designs for wedding design.
Sarah, thank you for taking time out of a genuinely wild schedule to talk flowers with me. And to everyone listening, if this conversation resonated, share it with a florist friend who needs to hear the part about burnout.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Sarah Campbell of Intrigue Designs?
Sarah Campbell is a floral designer and educator based on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and the founder of Intrigue Designs. She has been in business for nearly two decades, specializing in large-scale luxury installations and events. She teaches hands-on workshops through her Intrigue Across America tour, hosts international retreats for florists, and appeared on the Netflix competition series The Big Flower Fight.
How did Sarah Campbell get on The Big Flower Fight?
She had blocked August through October off her calendar after an exhausting 2018 national workshop tour, which happened to be exactly the window a casting director needed an American florist available to film. Multiple people across the floral industry independently passed her name along. She competed alongside her assistant Jordan, who had no prior floral experience.
Does sharing floral mechanics online hurt your business?
Sarah's position is no. She teaches paid workshops and also shares those same mechanics publicly on social media, and her argument is that a 30 to 60 second video is not a substitute for being in the room with hands-on instruction, real-time correction, and days of immersion. She encountered significant industry pushback when she started sharing openly, and kept going anyway.
Why is it so hard to get clear pricing from a florist?
Both Sarah and I named this as the biggest thing our industry needs to improve. Flower pricing is a genuinely moving target. Wholesale costs shift constantly, crops fail, availability changes, and different flowers carry completely different cost structures. A cut-and-come-again crop like zinnias produces repeatedly from one plant, while a snapdragon yields one strong stem and a few smaller side shoots. Labor, seed, maintenance, and upkeep all fold in on top of that.
What should I do when a flower I ordered does not arrive?
Sarah's advice is to dodge and weave. You still have to show up and deliver the event without the flower you were counting on. That means knowing your substitutes, staying flexible on the look, and being willing to source creatively under a tight deadline.
Do florists really experience burnout?
Yes, and Sarah was refreshingly direct about it. She had spent the week before our interview fully burnt out, resting in her garden and reposting old content rather than creating anything new. Her point, and mine, is that the exhaustion is rarely about the flowers themselves. It is the constant pace. The reset time is not optional.
What is an Intrigue floral retreat like?
The retreats bring a small group of florists together in an international destination for three days. The first was held at a private castle in Ireland. The November retreat takes twenty florists to the Netherlands for an architectural tour, a visit to a flower breeding farm, hands-on workshops, formal dinners, and cultural exploration, based at a historic estate booked exclusively for the group. Tickets for the Netherlands retreat sold out in roughly 33 minutes.
