It’s not hard to imagine Ramona Afonso living in a fairy tale. After all, as she herself says, she is always romanticising life – and now, with her new business, Flower Recipe Box, she’s teaching others to do the same.
That single bloom in your bathroom. The favourite mug that somehow makes your coffee taste better. The silverware you bring out to pretty up your table, rather than stashing it at the back of a cupboard. These are the things that add a little dash of beauty to your days, and they should be celebrated, says Ramona.
She’s on a mission to make sure that her own life is filled with as much glimmers and joy as possible – and always has been. Even as a child, she had a habit of collecting buds and flowers from the garden and arranging them in eye catching displays throughout the house.
Her love affair with aesthetics continued after school, when she studied fashion, going onto establish a highly successful label, Urban Goddess. It was all going extremely well – until she became a victim of her own triumphs. “I was showing my label at SA Fashion Week when I was headhunted to set up a clothing brand,” she recalls. Corporate was simply not her niche. “Being creative is like breathing for me, but there was very little scope for creativity.” Then came her wakeup call. Diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Ramona realised she could not afford to waste time doing something if her heart wasn’t in it.
She didn’t have to look very far to discover what fed her soul. Ramona had, for some time, been “dabbling” in interiors. “I actually designed our own home, which went on to win second prize in a competition in Tuis magazine and was featured on the cover,” she says. Soon, she was receiving requests from people who wanted to borrow her eye – and that was the start of her flourishing interiors business.
At the same time, during her cancer treatment, Ramona had become a very serious gardener. “It was cheaper than therapy,” she laughs, remembering how she would come home from nurseries with her boot laden with rose bushes – “at one point, we had 300 roses in our garden.” Both passions had to be put on hold, however, once Ramona’s husband received a seemingly irresistible job offer from the UK. The household – including the couple’s two daughters and four sausage dogs – settled in the Cotswolds. But it just didn’t feel like home. “We even toyed with the idea of moving to France because I am a huge Francophile. But I just knew I wouldn’t be happy,” she says.
The move back to South Africa brought just as much contentment as she’d hoped. It also brought an exciting new venture in the form of the Recipe Flower Box.
Ramona explains that she hadn’t exactly had her heart set on working with flowers until she reconnected with a contact at Multiflora. That’s when she realised she wanted to apply her creative flair to this niche – although she was adamant that she didn’t want to be a florist.
Instead, she thought, what if she offered a service similar to Ucook – a recipe kit of sorts, only working with flowers instead of ingredients? The result is her monthly Flower Recipe Box – a selection of high quality blooms delivered along with a vessel and everything else you might need to create a stunning floral display, including a QR code which, when scanned, shows a video explaining how to put the bouquet together.
Each month’s box is designed according to a specific theme (for instance, to celebrate Mother’s Day, May’s ‘Mommy and me’ theme features two vessels that come to life when filled with the fresh pastel blooms symbolic of that special maternal bond), and each is wrapped in a magnificent artwork that can be enjoyed long after the last petal has fallen.
“Because, yes, the beauty of flowers is short-lived. But that’s just the point – they remind you to be in the now,” Ramona says.
She points out that the joy of the Flower Recipe Box lies not only in the unabashedly luxe presentation (which one recipient described as “like unwrapping something from Louis Vuitton”), it’s also in the fact that you are learning a new skill and immersing yourself in a creative experience. “In our digital world, there is nothing quite like allowing yourself to be absorbed with something tangible,” Ramona says.
She has big plans for the Flower Recipe Box. She has already added a number of options to the range so that, if you prefer a less DIY approach, you can simply order some magnificent, vase-ready flowers, or select the Scent Box, filled with flowers carefully chosen for their heavenly fragrance. Soon, you’ll be able to curate your own flower atelier with accessories like secateurs, or spoil yourself with a scarf featuring one of the brand’s signature artworks. Ramona is also looking forward to offering private workshops and corporate events.
“There’s so much pleasure in taking a one-dimensional object and transforming it into something extraordinary. I’ve loved being able to do that at every stage of my life – and now, I feel honoured to be able to pass that pleasure on.”
Details: www.flowerrecipebox.com
Article by Lisa Witepski. Photo by Pretty Creative Studio
