Kelly Shore is the owner and lead designer of Petals by the Shore, a wedding and event floral design business in the Washington, D.C., area since 2011. In 2019, she founded the Floral Source to celebrate community, connection and confidence in U.S. floral sourcing.

She’s a proud supporter of America’s flower farmers and sources the blooms and foliage she uses in designs from throughout the United States 365 days a year. She believes that the origin of flowers matters!

Shore regularly works alongside flower farmers in her community to bridge the gap and strengthen relationships between floral designers and flower farmers. Her favorite moments in floral design are around being on farms among the flowers, seeing where they grow, how they grow and understanding the people who grow them. Shore feels those experiences strengthen her job as a floral storyteller and help her better serve clients.

Shore’s lush, colorful designs have been featured in Florists’ Review and Martha Stewart Weddings, among other national and local media. Her most recent passion project "A Year of American Grown bouquets" was featured in Florists Review in January and highlighted what grows in the U.S. 12 months a year.

Shore has twice been the featured floral designer for the American Grown Field to Vase Dinner Tour; once in Homer, Alaska, at Scenic Place Peonies, and at Bloomia USA in Virginia where she designed 36 hanging tulip chandeliers. In June 2018, she presented at the Slow Flowers Summit where she discussed how her relationships with flower farmers and her advocacy have shaped her business and allowed it to thrive.

She also was the lead designer for the annual bipartisan 107-year-old First Lady's Luncheon in Washington, D.C. in 2017 and 2018, leading a team of 35 volunteers from around the country to create the all-American Grown floral designs for the First Lady and political dignitaries. This yearly volunteer project with Certified American Grown Flowers brings awareness to our nation’s policymakers about the importance of supporting the U.S. floriculture industry. It also highlights why Americans and the The White House should buy and source botanicals from domestic flower farms.

Each February, she also joins America’s flower farmers on Capitol Hill to meet face to face with policymakers to discuss industry issues and share flowers farmers’ stories in an effort to create understanding, impact policy and foster change.

Her work in bringing visibility to local and American Grown flowers and the people who grow them launched her into a new season of her business and the creation of The Floral Source. Many designers are learning where they can source in their local communities and adding more sense of place and season to their designs. But challenges arise when their farms are off-crop for the season, yet they still have events they’d like to source domestically for. Floral designers need a modern way to source with transparency and ease. The Floral Source helps them do just that!

There’s also a need to foster stronger relationships and dialogue among all the chains of sourcing: wholesaler, farmer and florist. The Floral Source is florists’ connection to America’s flower farmers and the flowers they grow through retreat-style flower farm trips, one-on-one business mentoring for sourcing, one-day farm workshop intensives and more. With these tactics, Shore is empowering floral designers to feel confident and have more choice in their sourcing.

Shore earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising and a master’s in elementary education from the University of Illinois before starting her floral journey.