After entering the communications field following college, Ashley Kavanagh moved to Boston with her husband to work for a marketing agency. Within two weeks of her move to the East Coast, her mother was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer.
Kavanagh and her husband returned home to Montana following her mother’s death in 2019, and she lost her father shortly after. In the wake of her parents’ deaths, she switched gears and opened Rose Petal Floral and Supplies in Cut Bank, her husband’s hometown.
“I lost both of my parents within a year of each other and just felt like I always wanted to start my own business,” she said. “I helped other people bring their businesses to communities with marketing and I felt like if I was going to do it, now is the time.”
In September, Kavanagh purchased the former Glacier Wallflowers business in Columbia Falls and opened the second Rose Petal location in the former Yoga Hive on Nucleus Avenue. Now with locations on the east and west sides of Glacier National Park, she’s featuring local retailers and florists as well as exotic plants that wouldn’t normally be found in rural areas.
