Why are so many celebrities obsessed with LA’s Flamingo Estate?

“It’s about bringing culture into horticulture,” explains Flamingo Estate’s charming founder Richard Christiansen, who is busy putting his goats to bed when I call him for our interview.

He’s sitting under his favourite wisteria tree in the backyard of his home in LA’s Highland Park neighbourhood, a three-hectare private estate featuring a magical garden and a chic pink-hued Spanish-style house. He knew it would play a big role in his life as soon as he saw it.

“I was on a photo shoot in LA, and I ended up meeting this old man who had lived in this house for 65 years. He was 85 and walked me around the garden in his silk robe. The house, which was used to film porn movies, was in complete disrepair despite being in the middle of suburbia. The world had forgotten it, and it was crying out for someone to restore it. I made it my screen saver and was determined to live in it,” he recalls.

At the time Christiansen was at the height of his career. The son of farmers, he left his native Australia at the age of 16 to study law in London, before joining the creative world. By 28 he had opened his own successful advertising agency with offices in cities around the world, including New York and Hong Kong.

He was on the verge of his 40s when he finally bought the house and began an intense renovation project that made him re-examine his life and priorities.

“My business was performing well but I was failing on those important hidden metrics – nutrition, health and personal joy. I was sleepwalking. I just thought, how can I get out of this and what do I do?” he says.

“Funnily enough, I was walking along Hollywood Road [in Hong Kong] with a friend when we discussed the idea of a creating a brand connected to nature. Although I wasn’t sure how to start, I felt a roar inside of me. I always joke that it was a Julie & Julia story: as I brought the house and its garden back to life, I also came back to life.”

The wheels began turning when he met a local farmer who had trouble selling her produce due to the pandemic lockdown. He decided to help her out by selling veggie boxes at a bookstore he owned.

Week after week, they sold more and more to hungry customers, including Christiansen’s network of creative types and hipsters who kept spreading the word. It wasn’t long before the region’s best farmers began knocking on his door, bringing with them a variety of ingredients including olives, sage and lavender.

“This wonderful farmer came to me with the best olives in America, but I already had an olive oil, so we made a soap instead. That’s how we accidentally got into the beauty business,” says Christiansen, who named the brand after his beloved home.

“One farmer has introduced us to other farmers and the network just got bigger. We have suppliers all over the world now, including New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Mexico, and even Japan and India. Once we hit a critical mass, it wasn’t enough to just pull from local farms.”

What began with boxes of produce has grown into a self-care brand that champions botanical wellness. Today Flamingo Estate works with over 125 farms and boasts around 150 products including bath and body concoctions, flowers, oils, honey, candles, bread, hand sanitiser, even a rosé wine (Christiansen says he drinks nothing else).

His innovative collaborations and slick marketing initiatives – he invites celebrities and chefs to his home to try recipes using the products while all the images are shot in his Studio KO-designed home – have also contributed to the brand’s rapid success. The company now does around US$20 million in sales annually.

“Sometimes people get confused and ask if we are a food brand or wellness brand. I see us as a sourcing brand or ingredient brand. To me, Mother Nature is the last great luxury house,” he says.

“Don’t come [to us] if you want modern or innovation, because we are doing the oldest thing in the world that everyone has forgot. We are scaling scarcity.”

Christiansen has plenty in the pipeline for the coming year. In addition to launching a beauty line, he has an upcoming collaboration with Italian designer Gaetano Pesce. He is also venturing into supplying the hospitality world via a project with Rosewood Hotels in Mexico that will see him offer a custom line of products using locally sourced ingredients.

He will also be publishing his first book, which he describes as part manifesto, part biography. Each chapter will be dedicated to a different plant, including his beloved wisteria, followed by an interview with a person who he believes personifies the plant’s characteristics.

“It’s a combination of people I admire – be it Jane Fonda, Jane Goodall or Martha Stewart, or an environmental advocate in Hawaii, or a farmer we worked with in Mexico. Some are very famous, some very rich, some very simple but it’s amazing how similar their needs and desires are. It’s a truth for all of us,” he says.

“As we get deeper into AI and drunk on efficiency, I really believe that what will save us all is getting back to nature. What the world needs now is more farmers and gardeners.

“Living a good life begins with a good meal, good friends and nature’s pleasures. It’s not rocket science.”