The 'Wright' path

When Kate Wright started Bloom’n Gardens in 2005, she “thought it was just going to be some extra mowing on the weekends.” She didn’t know she’d soon quit her job to focus on the growing company, which celebrated its 11th anniversary last year with more than a dozen employees and $1 million in annual revenue.

Before then, she never envisioned starting her own business. In fact, landscaping wasn’t even on her radar when she started college in her home state of Maine with a major in civil engineering. After a year and a half of high-level math classes, she realized it wasn’t a fit, and took a semester of eclectic courses to find her calling. She fell in love with landscape design and changed her major to horticulture.

Her path changed again when she passed by an Army recruiting center where a sign read, “Opportunities for women in the Army.” The man inside must have had a compelling pitch, because 45 days later she was stationed with the Army in El Paso. Three months after that, she married him.

Read the full story from our July issue here.