By Rachael Lindley
Photography by Crystal Wise
You may know of Christine Figley through one of her three successful businesses: West Fork Landscaping, West Fork Garden Market and Elevate Your Celebrate. The Louisiana native, wife and mother, has had a lifelong penchant for horticulture and entertaining. With this knowledge, she has built an empire in less than a decade. However, seeing her expertise in person is a different experience entirely, as we found out with the house on our cover.
360West: Tell me about your personal background. Where are you from?
Christine Figley: I grew up in Alexandria, Louisiana and went to college at Louisiana Tech with a degree in accounting. When I graduated, I immediately went to work for one of the Big Four accounting firms. Later I worked as a controller and CFO of various companies, later switching to selling accounting software to large companies. After getting married and having my son, I was a stay-at-home mom for many years. My son graduates from high school this year.
360West: How did you start West Fork Landscaping? Has horticulture always been a passion of yours?
Figley: West Fork Landscaping began in 2017. I bought a small landscape company with about 12 employees. We celebrate eight years on June 5 and now have 40-50 employees, depending on the season. I’ve always had a genuine passion for landscaping, but I’m completely self-taught. My team is amazing and very experienced.
360West: What is your process with a new client?
Figley: For new builds or complete re-dos, I meet with my clients to understand their vision, how they want to use the space and how they want it to feel. I love to utilize photos. The more pictures I can get from them, the better. It helps them to articulate their vision. We then do a rough draft of the layout and the main plant palette.
We present that to them and leave it with them to digest and make any changes they want. Rinse and repeat until they are entirely comfortable with the final design. I have taken new clients to other clients’ gardens so they can see what a plant looks like in real time rather than a picture on an inspiration board.
360West: What landscaping jobs are you most proud of?
Figley: Kate and Sonny Dykes’ [TCU’s head football coach] landscaping was a lot of fun to do. The space gets used frequently, so seeing how it looks at different times of the year for the various events is fun. We have also done a lot of projects at D.R. Horton’s corporate headquarters. We just built them a raised garden for their chef at the headquarters’ restaurant. That was a cool collaboration. And we are currently working on an event space with them that will open this spring. It’s always fun to see that kind of thing come together.
360West: You have a few businesses. How do those all tie in together?
Figley: I had always wanted to open a retail store. It never made sense to me that Fort Worth is the 12th largest city in the country, and we still drive to Dallas all the time to purchase items for home and entertaining. I began writing down what I was buying over “there” and thinking of how to put it all in one space. What followed was West Fork Garden Market. It was a natural extension of the landscaping company where we sell outdoor and indoor planters that our landscaping customers needed, and holiday-specific decorations, as the landscaping company was already doing some of that.
The market allows us to expand and go even further beyond our landscaping customers. We offer pumpkin displays, holiday decorations and all sorts of home accessories and gifts. Shockingly, the faux orchids have been an unexpected opportunity for us. Apparently, people are really tired of buying new orchids all of the time. The progress made in the faux flower market is crazy. Sometimes, even I can’t tell the difference. We encourage people to bring in their planter/bowl or buy one from us, and then they pick out the flowers they want.
Elevate Your Celebrate came about because of Kate Dykes wanting me to put streamers in her yard to kick off football season. We started playing around with how to do it, and out of that came Elevate Your Celebrate. We now rent streamers and rent giant flowers, backdrops, disco balls, centerpieces, custom signs, tables, tablecloths, and we build custom items upon request. We recently built a golf cart for a TCU sorority and are building an 8-foot Ferris wheel for an upcoming event. So, we started with just streamers and have grown significantly over the last two years. When our clients have events, all three companies are often involved. West Fork Landscaping could be refreshing their outdoor planters, West Fork Garden Market could provide paper goods or an orchid, and Elevate Your Celebrate could be hanging streamers. It’s a ball when all three are working on a project.
360West: What is next for you and your businesses?
Figley: West Fork Garden Market’s temporary lease with The Shops at Clearfork is over, and we are moving back to the Marquita Drive space in June. We are making some changes to the old space and are so excited to move back and be in one building with landscaping and Elevate Your Celebrate.