Mary Louise Hagler’s business started with a wreath workshop, but her love of gardening came first.
“My father wanted to be a gardener, but I don’t think he was good at it,” said Hagler, who operates MLCHgarden, planning weddings and doing floral design.
She remembers him growing sunflowers that were taller than she was as a little girl, and that stuck with her. Gardening grew into a passion for her. She’s a master gardener with the Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program.
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Several years ago, she began custom designing wreaths. Her friends put a demand on her creative skills, and it wasn’t long before she had more requests than she could handle.
“It was time-intensive and labor-intensive,” she said.
Instead of turning down requests to make wreaths, she decided to hold workshops to teach people how to make their own wreaths, a project that she said “blossomed to about 100 women every year.”
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She holds the workshops each December, and many of the same people show up. It’s a popular activity for mothers and daughters and groups of friends, she said. Sometimes her loyal customers bring new people to the workshops. Those workshops grew into requests for year-round events.
December wreath workshops started Mary Louise Hagler’s small business. Courtesy Mary Louise Hagler. 
People make Mary Louise Hagler’s wreath making workshops an annual holiday activity. Courtesy Mary Louise Hagler.
“I started adding seasonal flower arranging,” she said.
Hagler said she likes to have the workshops in locations such as art studios that spark her clients’ creativity.
As more people found out about Hagler’s flair for floral design, it naturally led to brides and mothers of the bride asking for Hagler to do flowers for weddings.
“I was asked to do a friend’s wedding. So many people in Augusta do flowers and are good at it,” she said.
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She started with friends’ weddings, and it branched from there. At first, she focused just on the flowers, letting others do the rest of the organizing.
“I pooh-poohed the idea of a wedding planner,” she said until the day she went to a wedding reception and couldn’t place the flowers because the linens hadn’t arrived.
That was the day she said she realized that someone needed to coordinate all the small details. The bride and mother of the bride had more important things to think about besides the tablecloths.
Hagler is already booked for this fall’s weddings.
During the pandemic, Hagler spent much of the lockdown at her farm near Sardis. There she got back to the basics and has spent time thinking about how connected she is to gardening and to the soil.
She did virtual workshops, teaching flower arranging, and she said she enjoyed doing those. She also hosts a large Facebook group related to gardening in the area. She’s had a blog since 2009. It began as a diary, she said.
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Hagler said she likes the Instagram platform best to post about gardening.
“It’s really easy,” she said.
Find Hagler on Instagram @MLCHgarden.
Charmain Z. Brackett is the Features Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach her at charmain@theaugustapress.com.
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