Hess's relationship with flowers predates LOTUSWEI as a consumer brand. She had logged around 20,000 hours working with flower elixirs and private clients before launching products more widely.

This sense of apprenticeship still runs through the brand.

In a more recent conversation on the Growing Joy podcast, Hess discussed not only what premium flower essences by LOTUSWEI are, but how she studies them, how she attempts to validate what she observes about individual flowers, and what happens during the collection and dilution process.

The conversation also returned repeatedly to something broader: how disconnected modern life can make us feel from the natural world.

LOTUSWEI describes its essences as being collected by hand from wild environments and special gardens. Hess's method is based on a solar infusion of flowers in water, followed by preservation and dilution. These are the brand's own wellness practices and philosophies, rather than established medical mechanisms.

What is more interesting editorially is the attention to place.

The flower is not treated as an anonymous ingredient ordered from a supply catalogue. Its landscape, season and the circumstances in which they are encountered, become part of the story.

The scale becomes clearer when looking at where some of the flowers have actually come from.

One LOTUSWEI blend, Divine Timing, brings together flowers the brand says were hand-collected in Nepal, Taiwan, Iceland, Costa Rica, Korea, Canada, Florida and the Grand Tetons.

Other collecting stories are even more specific.

In Iceland, the team documented collecting a number of flower and plant essences while traveling through the country. In South Dakota, Hess found the Stream Orchid growing near a warm spring in a small part of the state where the species is uncommon.

At Naples Botanical Garden in Florida, collaboration with the garden allowed her to make an essence from the striking blue-green Jade Vine, a plant native to the Philippines, along with seven other tropical flowers.

More recently, Nepal has become another significant part of the collection story. LOTUSWEI's Wild Sky blend contains nine orchid essences collected in the subtropical mountains of Panchase, while the flower currently being explored through FLOWEREVOLUTION, Bulbophyllum roseopictum, comes from Nepal's Annapurna region and grows in small clusters on trees.

LOTUSWEI has returned to Taiwan repeatedly, and the country remains an active part of the brand’s flower-collecting story. The team recently filmed the third season of Flower Hunters there, revisiting flowers gathered on earlier trips.

Several Taiwanese flowers now appear across the brand’s blends, including Taiwanese Celosia in Awakened Understanding, Taiwanese Azalea in Sacred Awareness, Pink Melastoma in Divine Timing, Taiwanese Wild Lily in Sacred Body, and Purple Wishbone in Awakened Understanding. LOTUSWEI links each flower with different emotional themes, from clarity and creativity to compassion and self-acceptance.

The wider idea is that these flowers are not treated as one-off discoveries. They become part of an evolving archive that later feeds into blends, teachings, expeditions, and tools like the Master Flower Quiz, which features 108 flowers and botanicals collected from places including India, Costa Rica, the Sonoran Desert, Iceland, and Taiwan.

It creates an unusual loop in the brand's field-first approach: Hess travels into wild landscapes to find and study flowers, those flowers become part of the LOTUSWEI archive, and customers are eventually invited to look at the flowers themselves and notice which ones they instinctively respond to.

For anyone who already appreciates the way nature can encourage mindfulness, there is an appealing idea here. The finished product carries a story of looking closely at the natural world before asking what can be made from it.

From individual flowers to an entire product world

This type of intensive fieldwork eventually has to translate into something people can actually use.

LOTUSWEI's core flower-essence formats include elixirs, aura mists, anointing oils and balancing serums. The elixirs are taken internally, while the mists combine flower essences with essential oils in water.

Anointing oils pair them with jojoba oil, and balancing serums use a safflower-oil base. The wider range has also expanded into products such as flower-infused chocolate, soaps, bath rituals and pet elixirs.

The variety is important because it shifts the flower essence from something that has to be understood academically into something that can sit inside an existing routine.

Someone may enjoy adding an elixir to water. Another person may be far more likely to reach for a mist on her desk, use an aromatic oil at her pulse points, or work a serum into an evening body-care ritual.

LOTUSWEI has also built an unusual bridge between its collecting work and its community through FLOWEREVOLUTION.

Rather than offering only permanent blends, the program focuses on one flower essence for six weeks at a time. Participants receive limited-edition elixirs alongside a field guide, writing prompts, awareness practices and teachings from Hess. Some of those individual flowers may later become part of a future blend, while others may never enter the permanent collection.

As of August 2026, the featured flower is Bulbophyllum roseopictum, an orchid collected in Nepal's Annapurna region. The current cycle runs from July 26 through September 9, 2026.

That ongoing evolution makes the brand feel less like a fixed catalogue and more like a living archive of Hess's encounters with flowers.

The customer stories on LOTUSWEI's site offer another perspective on what happens after the flowers leave the field.

These testimonials are personal experiences rather than clinical evidence, but what is striking is how often people describe ritual, reflection and connection to nature, rather than simply discussing a product.

One FLOWEREVOLUTION member describes the flowers as “gentle” and their impact as “subtle,” explaining that returning to each month's flower helps her center herself around what feels most important. Another longtime participant describes carrying the monthly elixir and mist with her and appreciating the accompanying materials and prompts as much as the bottles themselves.

Elsewhere on the LOTUSWEI site, one customer describes Katie's flower elixirs as creating a moment of self-care that reminds her to slow down and listen.

This language makes sense in the context of the wider brand. LOTUSWEI is not simply presenting a collection of botanical ingredients. It has built rituals, education and community around paying attention to flowers.

In her recent Growing Joy conversation with Katie, host Maria Failla described the experience as different from a conventional questionnaire: users select the flowers they feel most visually drawn toward rather than working through a long series of written wellness questions.

That feels particularly aligned with Hess's broader philosophy.

The first interaction is not “What is wrong with you?” or even “What product do you need?”

It starts with a flower.

For a newcomer who does not know the difference between Inner Peace, Quiet Mind, Infinite Love or one of LOTUSWEI's more advanced blends, the Flower Reading Quiz provides a much more intuitive place to begin.

And perhaps this is the clearest expression of the brand's field-first approach.

Hess goes into landscapes looking for flowers. Those flowers become essences. The essences become blends, mists, oils, educational programs and personal rituals. Then, at the other end of its journey, the customer is invited to look at the flowers herself and notice which ones capture her attention.

For a wellness world that can sometimes feel obsessed with correcting, optimizing and adding more, there is something refreshingly different about starting with curiosity.

Before the formula, before the bottle and before the routine, there is simply a flower worth noticing.