About Gillian

Hi,

I’m Gillian, 

I run this little passion project from the comfort of

‘The Flower Workshop’, based at my home in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Efmé & Bo was founded during Lockdown, like many other ‘lost artists’, it allowed me the time to explore my creativity and my dream to create a business of my own.

And voila, E&B was born!

Firstly, let me explain the business name! 

My girls couldn’t pronounce each another’s names when they were little; Esmé was ‘Efmé’ to her big sister Brooke who was in turn ‘Bo’ to little Esmé! 

Very cute and very fitting for when the business launched.

Efmé and Bo didn’t start out as ‘flowers’, I bought a cutting machine and got carried away with all the exciting stuff I could make, it ran away with me until I felt like I wasn’t enjoying making those things anymore;  I sold my machine and changed the whole business plan in 2023.

My hobby and passion in life has always been 

Gardening, nature, flowers, plants, you get the gist, so...

Efmé and Bo was ‘re-born’!

I have always enjoyed growing flowers and bringing them inside from the garden.

It’s the best feeling growing something from a tiny seed; nothing beats the excitement when those little flower babies appear, pure joy! And to dry a flower you can then keep ‘forever’, that’s magic! I knew this passion for everything that grows and creating art from it, had to be the core for my business going forward.

‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’

My ethos is to be as eco- friendly & sustainable as possible in my work, I want to root my designs to the natural world as much as I can.

I sow, grow and harvest plants and flowers from my own garden and that of friends and families, then I dry them in my workshop before creating with them. 

My inspiration for E&B has always been nature and using responsibly foraged materials to work with Mother Earth and her seasons. 

Every part of my work is self taught, I have had no formal training or official certificates, I feel this gives me more freedom and keeps my work exciting and not to ‘by the book’.

I feel extremely grateful to get to call this my ‘job’, I fall in love with my work more and more every day, in the words of the legend Monet himself-

"I must have flowers, always, and always." 

A last paragraph to my family and friends, for cheering me on from the sidelines and always offering reassurance and encouragement, I am extremely lucky. 

Special mention to my forever supportive and patient husband, I would not be able to do this without him. 

He is an unpaid, forgotten employee of Efmé and Bo!

Thank you for visiting my website and for taking the time to read my story.. so far.