Hattie Molloy: Taking tablescapes and festive decorating to 'fresh' new heights

Hattie Molloy has always struggled to define what she does. When you make a living building sculptures from flowers (but also fruits, vegetables, seeds or sometimes just mounds of soil), the term “florist” doesn’t quite cut it.

Since launching her business in 2017, Molloy has consistently pushed the boundaries of traditional floristry, creating a botanical language that’s entirely her own. In her surrealist vision, things should be as weird and wonderful as possible, whether she’s designing arrangements for a wedding, tablescapes for private events, or large-scale installations for brands. She hesitates to call herself an artist – “I get imposter syndrome,” she says – but settles on “botanical artist”, even though the title leaves out her photography practice and foray into object design.

Molloy’s combination of vivid colour and unexpected materials is instantly recognisable, her concepts otherworldly but always dazzlingly beautiful: little green curlicues sprout from a mound of moss, a pile of lemons snakes its way up a wall, tall poppies emerge from a watermelon-turned-vase. Molloy has always been fascinated with vegetable gardens – she considers soil, worms and insects inseparable from her floral work.

Unsurprisingly, the Melbourne creative chafed against the formulas of floristry school. “My brain just doesn’t work like that. Every [arrangement] I do is individual, not something that’s replicated,” she tells Broadsheet. “A lot of the time I don’t even know what I’m doing until I start doing it. It’s like a meditative state where my brain can’t rest until it’s all balanced.” Rather than attempt to “replicate nature”, which in her view can’t be beaten, Molloy’s process is about reinterpreting natural forms and changing up the context. “I want people to look at my works and go ‘How the hell did that happen?’”

Molloy came to floristry professionally at age 24, after a few restless years in HR and marketing. She was a flower-obsessed kid, making posies for her family and notoriously pinching blooms wherever she spotted them. Yet, leaving school at 16, she felt lost: “I was young, could never stick to anything. I thought I just needed something monotonous.” When the corporate life inevitably proved a mismatch, she enrolled in a floristry course at Tafe. “I was like, ‘Why don’t I just do what I’ve always wanted to do?’ I finally figured out what got me ticking, what I actually found joy in.”

Molloy went on to work for local florists including Gina Lasker of Georgie Boy, creating her own floral designs at home just for fun. It was these experiments, which she photographed on her iPhone and uploaded to Instagram, that launched her business. “I was not confident at all about starting on my own, I kind of didn’t want to. Then people started asking me to do jobs, and it just snowballed,” she says.

In 2018, along came the Melbourne Fashion Week installation that accelerated her young business. “I worked with [stylist] Kate Gaskin, who let me do whatever I wanted – she had real faith in me very early on,” Molloy recalls. For the runway, she created a centrepiece of striking, grassy green hillocks punctuated by thousands of gerberas – like little volcanic mountains erupting with floral trails.

“I didn’t actually tell the client I was using gerberas until three days out, because I knew it wouldn’t get over the line,” Molloy says with a chuckle. “I was like, ‘Oh well, it’s all ordered, all done – sorry!’” Gerberas, she explains, were considered daggy and outdated (think ’90s Anne Geddes portraits). “But I felt that arranging them in a very sculptural way and seeing them en masse changed the context. That shape and movement – that shifts people’s perception. To this day it’s still one of my favourite jobs.”

In 2021, Molloy’s world was “flipped on its head”. Diagnosed with functional neurological disorder (FND), a rare condition that affects how the brain sends and receives information to the rest of the body, Molloy was hit out of the blue. “I couldn’t walk or talk,” she says. “Now I’m in a wheelchair, can’t walk over 300 metres and have a lot of motor-skill issues. It’s been three and a half years and I’m still figuring out how to manage my health.”

Molloy’s mum stepped in as full-time carer while the young artist relearned life skills. Since her diagnosis, Molloy has had to rethink everything – from her daily routine to the way her business operates. “For people with disabilities, events and the productions behind them are not at all accessible,” she says. “It’s a really hard world to navigate.”

The physically demanding tasks that were once her norm – like going to the flower market at 2am or working late nights – are no longer an option for Molloy, whose flare-ups can prevent her from getting out of bed. A team of assistants and freelancers now help her realise her creative vision on days when she can’t be on-site or out shopping. She has started planning her designs, too – something she rarely did before – to translate the image in her head into instructions others can follow. The last few years have been a grieving process, she says. “I had to accept change, and I feel like now I’m getting there.”

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As Molloy’s physical world shrunk, her creativity has been increasingly directed towards what’s around her. She loves designing beautiful, functional objects for botanical lovers and fellow florists; “Even if I can’t access that world sometimes, it’s nice to still be part of the community.” She plans to expand the Hattie Molloy homewares universe, which right now includes vases, photographic prints and an annual calendar. “I’ve got so many vase ideas!” she enthuses. “I feel like I’m finally hitting my stride with it.”

In future, she’ll take on fewer installations to concentrate on designing objects – a pivot she’s nervous about but knows is necessary for her health. “I need mediums that aren’t ephemeral, because I need to pick it up when I’m feeling good and able.” One thing she definitely is not pivoting to? “Going on Tiktok and dancing in front of flowers – I refuse!” Social media may have helped launch her career but “it’s part of the game”, she says, not where she wants to live. “I have to disengage, otherwise I feel like, ‘what am I doing this for?’ Is it because I want things to do well on the internet? It’s not.”

What matters is being attuned life’s small joys. Molloy loves to visit garden fairs and nurseries around Victoria, where she is surrounded by “her people”, she says with a laugh. “Everyone’s a bit batty in the best way possible!” Her apartment balcony is a tiny oasis of potted greenery, vines and flowers, while inside, decorative garlic braids and bulbs of allium flowers line the lounge room walls.

“I try and change the space up and make it as weird and wacky as I possibly can, because it’s my whole world,” she says. Molloy points to a single cob of dried corn, its husk pulled back to reveal colourful kernels. It is perched atop a homemade clay pedestal on her mantelpiece, like a little work of art. For Christmas this year, she’s fashioned a tree from tomatoes and gerberas, and a festive tablescape to match. Last year she used Spanish moss, and the year prior was flowering garlic. “I like to have a play around and see what happens.”

Gardens are Molloy’s “true love”, she says – a place where she feels at ease. “Gardens are great to pull you out of your own shit. You can see that the world continues, keeps turning, keeps on moving. My mum always says if I’m not doing well, just put me in a garden and the lights come back on.”

Hattie’s tips for a festive tablescape

Simple is best

“I did something for Flamingo Estate and Mecca recently and we just did piles of tomatoes and artichokes. So just highlighting things and letting them stand alone is impactful. Even a row of oranges down the table is chic and gorgeous.”

Make an artful pile
“You don’t want a blob. You’ve got to edit a little bit and move things so that there are peaks and valleys, like a mountain range with a stream going down the side. That’s what I think when I’m doing piles.”

Group things
“Keep things grouped together, like beautiful tulips en masse, or foliage en masse. I don’t mix flowers with foliage a lot. I think once you start to mix and get bitsy, that’s when things don’t look right.”

No vase? No problem

“Sometimes I use fruit as a vessel. Poke a hole in it and put a flower in there. You can also go to the market and get something in season like calendula. Even if you don’t focus on height and just plop their heads off and rest them on the table, that’s super cute. It doesn’t have to be elaborate.”

Shape your blooms

“When I’m arranging flowers in a sculptural way, I like to use a Kenzan or a vase with a grate. That allows you to have angles. It’s also about layers with floral arrangements. If you have big hero flowers up top, then you have to fill the base to create depth.”

Have fun with it

“In this day and age, everything feels like it has to be perfect for Instagram. Have a play around and get less caught up in the outcome; enjoy the process. It’s going to look better than having nothing on the table anyway.”

This article first appeared in Domain Review, in partnership with Broadsheet.