Opened by neighborhood residents
Kimberly and Enrique Sevilla after one too
many flowerless dinner parties, Rose Red & Lavender specializes in modern,
romantic arrangements with a laid back Williamsburg aesthetic.
Originally from West Virginia, Kimberly Sevilla worked at the USDA Appalachian Fruit Research Station for four years as a research assistant while working towards a degree in Biology and Chemistry at Shepherd University.
In 1992, she decided to take a sabbatical prior to entering graduate school and moved to New York City to pursue a career in more creative fields. She attended FIT and Parson's eventually found her niche designing and building window displays, trade show displays and museum exhibits. Her clients included The Smithsonian, Reebok, Pepsi, Nike, Barney’s, Cole Haan, Calvin Klein, Burberry, Mac Cosmetics, Kenneth Cole, the NFL, the MLB, Lego and other A-list companies.
Her career was very demanding and every spare moment was spent gardening both at a postage stamp sized garden in New York City and in a 1 acre garden at country house in Upstate New York. This kept her grounded and she found it relaxing and would work from dawn to dusk. She eventually perfected her own organic gardening techniques and continued to study horticulture extensively.
Building Tradeshow Exhibits and Museum Displays took Kimberly around the world. Everywhere she went she would take some time off to visit botanical gardens and study how other people garden, particularly in urban spaces. Places visited included Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China, Italy, France and the UK. Did you know in Italy, people grow food in median strips on highways, France, has the worlds largest living wall? People still grow lemons and grapes in their tiny back yard gardens in Sorrento, as they have been doing for thousands of years.
After the birth of their daughter in 2008, Kimberly decided to make another life change and open a garden center and floral design studio in Brooklyn called Rose Red & Lavender where her focus would be on Organic Gardening, Stunning Floral Design and Growing Food in small spaces. This shopwould fill the missing niche between fancy, garden oriented stores that were impractical for serious gardeners and large suburban garden centers that were also impractical for the urban dweller who wouldn’t know where to put a six pack of tomatoes and where the use of a rotatiller or broadcast spreader would be laughable.
Creating Floral arrarangements and decor for weddings and events was a natural fit for both Enrique and Kimberly who have been designers for years and their designs have been featured in New York Magazine, Time Out New York, Bride's Magazine and The Knot.
Kimberly and Enrique continue to garden at ther home in Brooklyn with their two children and they grows figs, grapes, apples, pears, plums, strawberries, vegetables and honeybees all in their postage stamp sized garden.
