Kuit Flowers: Australian-Born, London-Made, a Floral Revolutionary

Jake Kuit, an Australian possessing a Dutch surname, walks into Soho Farmhouse to discuss the UK wedding industry, sustainable floristry and his unlikely path to becoming a botanical artist with a fellow Queer twenty-something and non-British native over Zoom.

This isn’t the start of a terrible, belabored joke; it’s the setting of my meeting with Jake Kuit of Kuit Flowers, the botanical artist and floral revolutionary with immense dreams and a platform ready to make them reality. Reality TV, that is! Ahead of his television debut on the Amazon Prime show, Ready, Set, Start-Up—on which he will compete for investment into the product he says will change the ways we work with waste in floristry and beyond—he’s preparing a botanical masterpiece for the Most Curious Catwalk. Still awaiting the muse, Jake knows two things for certain: his floral artwork will be colorful and when you view it, you should be able to hear music. He’ll tell us more about what he means in a moment, but for now—

He’s just received a small cast iron skillet of Mac’n’cheese at his table tucked next to a wall of paned windows and he ducks elegantly out of frame to have a bite, before swooping back into view, his eyes full of glee. Must have been a good bite. Over the background din of Soho Farmhouse, filtered through Jake’s AirPods, we conduct our interview.

“Get into my mind space,” he says, shaking out his hands, bouncing in his seat, preparing to delve deep into what makes his business, Kuit Flowers, all that it is. “Who am I, who am I? That’s the real question, isn’t it?” He ponders aloud, swaying slightly in his chair as if still searching out the lightning bolt of inspiration. “I’m the founder of Kuit Flowers; London’s first botanical artist specializing in sustainability. That’s our core focus.”

Kuit Flowers is taken from his last name, Kuit, but like every good name there’s a story that suits this enterprise perfectly. “I embraced my culture and embraced my last name and it means life—“ he tells me, going on to break down the etymology of the word, which originally indicated the process of giving life, of a child being born. “And I thought why not support myself?” he asks. The name feels fortuitous, but when he shares his mother’s maiden name, which translates as laurels, his life path into the botanical arts feels like more than fortune or a bit of magic, it feels fated, meant to be. If you put both names together its meaning could be read as “tree of life.” His enthusiasm peaks as he shares that during lockdown he fully explored his ancestral past; he was, “—figuring out who I come from, where I come from, to know who I am today so I can continue that tradition.”

“I want to provide nature and creativity to anyone who needs it—across weddings, events, corporate…” he trails off and resumes. “I’m there to bring magic and flowers to everyone who needs it.”

Jake speaks to me about his inspirations, everything from the way he built his business as a refraction of the terrible wastage produced by the floral and events industries to his love of home, a coastal town over three hours South of Sydney, which he travels back to for long stretches. He grew up on a beach, a rain forest at his back. I can see its terrible beauty and wild stillness continues to have a hold on him, even as he sits with his back to the British sun in a domestic corner of a kitchen synonymous with societal exclusivity and domestic comforts. Home is always on a long-distance call to him, regardless of which shore he’s on, but he searches for creatives wherever he is, participating in, “…coffee culture, as much as possible. How can I not? I’m Australian.” He grins self-consciously at the window before turning to face me again.

He’s a self-described “East London boy, through and through, but from Australia.” To claim such a thing, you have to have been born in a place, or if not born, made by it. He tells me a story of a London park bench, a very romantic setting that is quickly and soberly unpeeled—like a rose in his hands—as anything but.

“Floristry saved my life and that’s why I want to tell my story.”

It goes like this: at twenty-one Jake Kuit followed a boy to London, hoping to launch himself as an artist—he cites Andy Goldsworthy as an inspiration—from the winged arms of love. It’s not that Icarus flew too close to the sun, it’s that someone he trusted loaned him wings and ripped them away again. He spent months homeless, three of them on that unromantic park bench in London, sleeping, surviving, and stubbornly refusing to find a way home that didn’t include a way through. He refused to leave London on anyone else’s terms.

“We didn’t work out, but me and London worked out,” he shares, “and that was the relationship that I needed.”

No one new back home and he had no friends to rely on in the UK. “I had to build myself up from the ground up,” he tells me, a bit of hurt still evident in his posture and his gentle, but determined choice of words. I can hear that this is a story he’s still telling himself, as much as he’s privileging me by sharing the roots of his journey to becoming a botanical artist with a bi-national presence. He’s still healing and telling his story through flowers, through his words, through his determination to get through and in his refusal to surrender his dreams of adventure and artistry to the person who broke his trust.

“That healing started with a job in a flower shop and being creative and being surrounded by nature like I was back home. And then from there it just organically happened,” he tells me with tremendous vulnerability.

Jake Kuit

Though he didn’t expect to become a botanical artist, he doesn’t regret the path that led him down this road; it’s the magic again, it’s in his name—the tree of life, a being with roots so deep into the soul of the earth that it can only regenerate and can never be destroyed completely. He will celebrate the six year anniversary of his move to London two days from the publishing of this piece. He’s become an East London boy through a through.

“It has just been adventure after adventure,” he shares with me. Jake could be judged a name-dropper by those who don’t know his story, but as he shares his commissions, his friendships, his projects and the places he’s since worked, it feels less like name dropping and more like titling, as if giving all the chapters he couldn’t foresee a name. From a friendless, financially-immobilized young adult to a London business owner with friends eager to share of themselves with his prolific art to the places—like Soho Farmhouse—who’ve chosen Kuit Flowers to partner with, the story of his success may have been fated, but at no point did it feel like a given. “I never expected that and you know, I’m a psychic, so a shock for me as well,” Jake says with a wink in his voice.

“The people I’ve met, the creations that I’ve created, the jobs I’ve been a part of have gone from so small-scale to some of the largest installations in London.”

This is the garden path he wants to continue along, to showcase contemporary, edgy florals without sacrificing the earth to build the ladder of his career. That’s what he intends to do at Most Curious, showcase how modern floristry can be practiced ethically and sustainably. He even hopes to be a carbon-neutral business by the end of the year!

Inspired by a recent experience of taking in a Monet to the sounds of techno, Jake hopes that when you view his floral creations at the Most Curious Catwalk, you’ll be able to read his intentions like sheet music. He’s shared so much today, but the song he’s already associating with the piece is one he’s keeping close to his chest for now.

“I’m here to change the world in a way that helps others to change it as well,” he tells me as we wrap-up and he gets back to his now cold dish of mac’n’cheese. “I’m not just a florist, I’m something extra…something extra,” he says, affecting a tone of pure self-aware sass. He’s as honored to be a part of Most Curious as we are to have him. Jake Kuit is looking forward to meeting couples who will appreciate his aesthetic and commitment to sustainability at the Most Curious Wedding Fair, March 4th-6th at the Truman Brewery.