We recently connected with Sarah McAllister and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I think risk in the modern sense is pretty sanitized. Risk with a physical sense of danger has been mitigated in our society which is obsessed with comfort and control. The risk I am referring to is less of a tight rope walk or Alex Honnold level feat, and more of risk that is inherent in breaking with societal norms. There is an awareness of what is safe and comfortable and then there is being pushed and led to move through that, facing the arising discomfort with bravery to mine the gem of life.

I could very well have gone down traditional route of college, career, marriage and family. My soul had other plans for me. I have always been an artist and creative at heart and have a deep spiritual interest in occult and weird topics. For me, it has in a sense felt risky to pursue my hearts desires because they have often made me feel like an outsider. I know some people are very existentially comfortable with outsiderness, but it still comes and goes for me.

Now I can recognize, as a quote that has been attributed to Krishnamurti goes, that “It is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society” but it doesn’t negate the feelings of ostracization that arise, perhaps from a deep biological need we have to be included in the group for our very survival and perhaps from a lingering desire to just fit in because it is inherently safer and less risky.

What I am saying is that for me, being an artist and an intuitive person comes with it’s own wounds in a society which the value of those attributes is questionable and downright denied. So for me to be myself- to think for myself- to follow my inner flame in spite of all the artifice, endless distractions, roadblocks and people telling me not to- is in itself a risky thing. It is risky to step outside of whatever is considered “normal” and to pursue what is authentic because I stand to lose the comfort and assumed predictability that comes with living a conventional life.

Night Garden, as a project, is something that felt like was planted in me. There is something evocative that it’s going for. There are good questions arising as to how ecologically sustainable floristry is and what the relationship is like between florist and flowers, and this is something I am in dialogue with myself about. Ultimately, I feel like the beauty of nature is radiating through the flowers and that they want to be seen and appreciated and talked to. There is something emerging here as relationship with nature, which I find to be crucial in how we continue to move through the Anthropocene.

There is also just something so enlivening about the emotions that flowers stir. There is joy, there is wonder at the smells, the shapes, the colors, the textures, the varieties. There are memories of other people and times of our lives. There is simply an energy present in a room with flowers which is impactful whether it’s consciously realized or not.

Cut flowers are also a poignant meditation on death and temporality. They are fleeting as everything in this dimension of existence is.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started Night Garden in 2019. I had tried my hand at a couple other creative small businesses before this, but working with the flowers felt different. There is a meditative, flow state quality to working with the flowers. There is a delicacy. There is a dialogue.

Floristry was one of the few markets that actually had a boom during the pandemic, so I was fortunate to ride that wave at the beginning of my business. It was lovely to be able to lighten peoples days and moods with the flowers.

The tag line I created for Night Garden is “Dark Side of the Bloom,” and that says a lot about the vibe of the project. I was really inspired by the dark of night (obviously) the unseen, the moon, the mysterious. I also am a pretty big Pink Floyd fan. So my floral designs often use unusual textures and combinations, and I particularly like to use black roses. I didn’t create a brand with the intention of creating a brand, it just came to me as what it was. I don’t care for being incredibly cohesive from project to project, but I do care about staying true to myself as an artist. I only take on clients who trust my vision.

I have mostly created unique special order arrangements, created designs for small weddings and events, and love to do a new thematic release each Valentine’s Day. Since moving to Las Vegas in early 2023, I have been regrouping. My next goal is to build my portfolio further to book hotels and creative installations for sets and events.

Something I am most proud of is not sacrificing my integrity to book clients or get gigs. I’ve had a strong sense of staying true to myself and value that over money. I truly don’t like hustling on Instagram (I think social media is making us incredibly complicit, dulled and disconnected from our bodies and each other) so I am not on there much, and maybe it hurts my business, but I have to stay true to what I know. A goal would be to hire someone to help me with the social marketing so that I can utilize it as a tool, but I also ask myself if I am being complicit in paying someone to do it for me.

Another thing I would like to share is that I don’t do everything alone! And my assistant Sequoia is incredible. She is organized and meticulous and is always a great second set of eyes and hands. She also knows how to tetris an SUV like a motherf*cker and I love her for that.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

My view on this is admittedly pretty grim in it’s current iteration. It’s my opinion that our society does not value art, only artifice. Put plainly, art is the symbol, artifice is the sign. There’s a incredible book discussing this topic by J.F. Martel called “Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice.” There is increasing pressure for artists to not only be artists, but to be business owners, marketing gurus, social savvy stars. Do you know how demeaning it is for something you create with the muse of inspiration – something real and tangible, with texture and aroma, to have to be compressed down to an image or video in a tiny pixelated square in order for people to access it? Even then, we are so inundated with these images that they don’t even do anything for us anymore. They are just flat representations of something someone poured themselves into, to be seen and discarded and forgot about within seconds. So, yeah, society does not currently support artists because current society has no use for art. Perhaps even modern humans are growing so unfeeling as to not be moved by art.

I realize this is dismal, so what can be done? Well my dream would be that people would get off their phones and start looking around them and touching things. Start asking each other how we are doing and actually listening. Start listening to the sounds around us and within. Start reconnecting with their bodies and the physical world. That may be a pipe dream at this point. I haven’t fully thought through what it would have to take for art without commercial appeal to become meaningful to people other than those who create it. Maybe it will take the end of capitalism. Maybe it will take the failure of the entire world as we know it and us being forced to pass the time surviving- sitting around campfires, telling stories and using ochre to scrawl symbols on the cave walls again, because that’s all we may have.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The goal is to follow my heart and hope that has a positive ripple effect through the energetic body of the world. I know we are finally starting to have discourse around the perils and harms of individualism and I do agree that we should be gauging our power towards the whole of humanity and our interconnectedness. But there is something to, as Jack Kornfield says, “tending to the part of the garden we can touch.” There is something to an authentic expression of the soul and inspiring others through leading by example. There is power in actualizing who we are in the way it touches the world around us, even though the effects may be incredibly subtle and not visibly apparent. On a good day, I just want to live as gracefully as I can.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nightgardenfloral.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/nightgardenfloral

Image Credits
Celina Kenyon