My friend Carmen from Miami is amongst the most dynamic people I've ever known. She's an expat Venezuelan with an attitude, a winning attitude. Such fun to be around and so inspiring, this recent article from the Miami Herald tells it like it is...
From the ground (floor) to the treetops
She's electric without the shock, an Energizer evangelista for green.
Her name is Carmen Mendez Mackesy, but everyone calls her Carmen, from the guard at the Brickell Avenue condo where her crews maintain the plants to the client who changed his English landscape into a bit of Bali.
She calls her business Southern Blossoms, evoking visions of Scarlett O'Hara and Tara, but her look is far from antebellum. In South Florida, she has landscaped everything from The Bank of America to apartments in a once-decrepit neighborhood that are now a charming rental complex.
At Christmas, the decorations you see in Brickell banks and business lobbies are done by Carmen. You'll find arrangements by Carmen in the Wachovia Financial Center; in the New World Tower; in the landscape at Gus and Gloria Machado's house; at Peter Fedele's house as well as his construction sites, and at Somerville residence at Camillus House, where her volunteer work has everyone gardening in raised beds and raised hope.
American Express recently hired her to landscape and maintain all three of its properties in South Florida.
''She's the rising star of Bank of America and Trammel Crow,'' says Fedele, CEO and president of Golden Sands General Contractors, who hired her not only for his own home but his commercial buildings.
''Carmen has the ability to come in with 30 guys and work day and night and complete a landscape in three days,'' Fedele says.
``In the construction world, there aren't that many women. Carmen comes in with iron underwear. She knows how to handle all the machos. She knows how to handle herself well.''
''In this town, she stands out as a person who does what she says she will do,'' says Timothy Keable, general manager of Cushman & Wakefield of Florida at the Wachovia Financial Center.
Now 46, Mendez Mackesy lives in the Redland where her nursery and warehouse are behind her home. Her husband, Robert, is an art dealer and collector. Late marriage; no kids dogs. And umpteen businesses that are all bulging at the seams.
''You have thousands of immigrants coming into this country daily,'' says Mendez Mackesy, who was born in Venezuela. ``I'm one. If you have a passion, doors open. Just be willing to do it, and doors will open.''
``Through coincidence, necessity or desperation, I found my calling: The plant world.''
She began her career during her college days by selling flowers to restaurants. Then she became a landscape installer. She studied tree pruning to become an arborist and teach her crews how to prune properly. She knows about drainage, about floral arrangements for hotel lobbies, about how to drive cranes and how to suggest which tree might work well for the City of Miami. Robin Diaz, the mayor's wife, has worked with her on several projects.
In her exuberance, she will talk your ear off and you will enjoy every moment, but you just might have to stop for a caffeine fix at Soyka's Restaurant, where the waiters know her on sight.
An orphan from Venezuela, she came to the United States and spent three years at the University of Miami in civil engineering.
She wasn't really an orphan, but didn't know it for many years. Her elderly father was a cattleman in a prominent Venezuelan family with nine children. The maid was 17, he was 60, and they had a child. Mendez Mackesy was hidden away in a Catholic orphanage to avoid a scandal.
When the father died, one of the siblings told another, hey, we have a half-sister in an orphanage, shouldn't we get her? They did, and then sent her to learn English at a Catholic boarding school in Evanston, Ill. In the cold northern reachers of the United States, she learned to play volleyball and excelled. When she announced to her family her desire to become a professional player, the brother and sister-in-law who rescued her said absolutely not, so she came to UM.
''I dreamed I'd build roads and bridges in exotic lands -- on which planet I'm not sure,'' she says.
After falling in love with Coconut Grove, she worked as a waitress to pay rent in the Grove rather than stay in a college dorm, then began selling flowers to restaurants. She took flower-arranging classes in Pompano Beach for six weeks from 6 to 10 p.m., and her teacher told her ``You're a little scattered, but you have the right eye.''
She and a friend ran their flower business in the Grove cottage, keeping flowers in the refrigerator. By 1983, she had started Floralworks, and Monty's restaurant in Coconut Grove was a big customer. She eventually dropped the name Floralworks because Latins couldn't pronounce it, she says. Southern Blossoms was born in 1989.
She started selling big arrangements to hotel lobbies.
She made the deals this way: She would provide four weeks of flowers for the price of three. If the management liked what they saw, then the price after six months would go up to the price of four weeks. She did The Miami Club, Stearns-Weaver law firm and other downtown buildings.
She didn't at the time do landscaping. But when Gloria Machado, whose husband owns Machado Ford, sold their estate after Hurricane Andrew, she told the new owners that Mendez Mackesy would do their landscaping, and ``I jumped from florist to landscaping.''
Gloria Machado told her, ``I believe you can do it, and don't make me look bad.''
The pressure was on.
''I drove around and spent two weeks looking at every neighborhood and every garden, and trying to understand design,'' she said. ``I consulted another installer. They had 90 days to finish.''
Must you be told that she finished on time?
For Fedele of Golden Sands, she created a little Bali. Paths of stone and pebbles, stands of bamboo, orchids in the trees have replaced grass and shrubs. A huge trellis of guadua bamboo from South America serves as a regal entryway to the home, while huge Balinese pots and sculptures dot the yard. A fish pond and waterfalls -- Fedele's favorite part of the yard -- are behind the house, reachable by one of the meandering pathways. There's even an outdoor opium bed (refinished every year) to complete the getaway feel.
''It has been aging incredibly well,'' Fedele says of his 3-year-old garden. ``That's the real eye of a pro designer. She can see whole things at their mature level. There are focal points and hidden areas. She does little details with an artistic eye.''
After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, she went into tree-trimming, initially to help her crew earn money from tips. She worked for 18 months on Sylvester Stallone's bayfront property in Miami near Vizcaya.
And, being Carmen, she started studying for an arborist's license, which she received in 1995. ''If you're going to do this right, do it right,'' she said.
The tree business has put her landscaping company's income at more than $1 million a year. She lectures and teaches for arborist societies.
A consultant for Kimley Horn, the planning group that does most of the county, city and state contract work, Mendez Mackesy also has offered advice to Miami's mayor, whom she knew before he became mayor.
''I will consult for the city, but not do business with the city,'' she says. That way, she can speak her mind.
At this stage in her life, Mendez Mackesy also has begun to give back to the country that has given her opportunity. She works with mothers and children at Somerville residence of Camillus House to plant flower and vegetable gardens, gathering donations from fellow nurserymen. And she works with children at the Belafonte Talcolcy Park in Miami.
Today, she grosses more than $2 million a year from her various businesses. But she still is out on the job, training crews, directing the tree movers, overseeing the planting of ground covers.
''I love the humbleness the work brings,'' she says.
