Black Petal Floristry was founded by Nicole Harkness, a designer whose path to flowers began long before the studio itself.

A graduate of Pratt Institute, Nicole began her career designing high-end corporate interiors in New York City. That background continues to shape the way she approaches flowers today: through composition, scale, movement, and intentionality, with a reason behind every design decision and an awareness of how a piece relates to the space around it.

Flowers first entered her work while styling completed interiors for their final photography. Nicole would source flowers from New York City's Flower District and create arrangements for the spaces she had helped design. It was an early intersection of two creative worlds, and one that eventually led her to study floral design at the New York Botanical Garden.

What floral design offered was something Nicole had been missing. In interiors, there was often a separation between imagining a design and physically bringing it to life. With flowers, those two parts became one. She could conceive an idea, work directly with the materials, sculpt it with her own hands, and see the entire environment come together.

That hands-on process remains at the heart of Black Petal. Nicole is continually experimenting with flowers and botanicals, looking beyond their expected use and exploring what else they can become. A palm can be woven or manipulated. A rose can be reflexed into an entirely different form. Foliage can become structure rather than filler. Even the tropical landscape surrounding her Florida studio becomes part of the creative vocabulary.

The approach is instinctive, but never arbitrary. Each piece is considered not only visually, but experientially: how it moves through a space, interacts with the architecture, draws you in, and ultimately makes you feel.

Based in Tampa Bay, Black Petal is a boutique floral studio creating unexpected, sculptural florals for weddings, events, and everyday moments.