Our story

Two Sisters. Two Paths. One Shared Story. Hansen Botanica began with flowers. But really, its story began many years earlier, with two sisters growing up in different countries, each with missing pieces in their family story — and neither knowing quite where those pieces would eventually lead. We are Lillan and Elisabeth Hansen. We grew up apart, in Sweden and England, and did not meet until we were adults. Yet somehow, through love, loss, searching, a little luck — and, rather fittingly, flowers — our lives eventually found their way back to one another.

Lillan

I grew up without my father. My mother raised me and my brother, and for many years I had little contact with Kjeld.

Then, when I was in my thirties, I did something very simple.

I sent him flowers for Father's Day. That bouquet reopened a relationship.

Afterwards, we began spending time together and enjoyed several summers in Denmark. During one of those summers, my father told me something I had never known.

I had a sister. Her name was Elisabeth.

Life moved on, but I never forgot about her.

Then came a series of losses. My brother passed away, and later my father died too.

After losing them, finding my sister became even more important to me. Over the years I searched for Elisabeth on and off, but without success.

Then, one day, I happened to be talking to a neighbour about the sister I had never met.

She began searching too. And somehow, she found her.

I sent Elisabeth a message asking the question I had wanted answered for years: Could you be my sister?

And she was. I had finally found her.

Elisabeth

I was born in Denmark in 1977, to my British mother, Doreen, and my Danish father, Kjeld. My parents separated when I was a baby, and Mum brought me home to Liverpool. I never knew my father, and for years that part of my story stayed unfinished.

Later, during my own therapy as part of my training as a Clinical Psychologist, I reflected on what had shaped me — and one thought stayed: perhaps it was time to find my dad. About a year later I contacted the Danish authorities to trace Kjeld. The answer was heartbreaking — he had died only months earlier. I had finally gone looking, and I was just too late.

I assumed that was where my Danish family ended. But Kjeld had already told someone about me: somewhere in Sweden, I had a sister who knew my name.

Years later, after I lost my mum too, a message arrived through LinkedIn: "I think you might be my sister." It was from Lillan — she knew about Mum, she knew Liverpool, she knew our father. We shared messages, photos and family history, and the impossible became certain. We were sisters.

Lillan & Elisabeth

Then flowers became part of our story again

Flowers had already reopened Lillan's bond with our father; now they wove through our story as sisters. On an early visit, Lillan had flowers and wine waiting at our hotel — among them a deep maroon winter bloom, tied to Christmas in Sweden. When Elisabeth and Tom planned their December wedding, she knew exactly who should create the flowers — Lillan — and asked her to be bridesmaid too. And Christoffer, Lillan's son and Elisabeth's nephew, walked Elisabeth down the aisle in honour of Kjeld. That deep maroon became the wedding's inspiration — Sweden came to England — and the flowers stood for far more than decoration: family, memory, love, and something once lost, found again.

The picture shows us at Southport Flower Show, England, 2025

Elisabeth surprised Lillan with tickets to the famous flower show held in Southport. As a young child Elisabeth had her photo taken with one of the winning entries.

The Concept

Through the joyful chapter - and the difficult ones

Our story holds great happiness, but sorrow too. We had both lost our mums, our father, and Lillan the brother she grew up with, Erik, whom Elisabeth never got to know. There's a quiet irony as well: Elisabeth's older half-sister, Racheal, spent more of her childhood alongside Kjeld than either of us. And after years of working too hard, Lillan became unwell and stepped back to recover, with Elisabeth beside her. Perhaps it all taught us the same thing: life is made of chapters — joyful, painful, beginnings, endings — and every one matters.

One sister works with people's stories. The other tells stories through flowers

Elisabeth is a Clinical Psychologist; her work is listening to people's stories and helping them make sense of love, loss and change. Lillan's language is flowers — colour, scent, season and form. Flowers can welcome a baby, mark a wedding, say thank you, remember someone, or simply say "I'm thinking of you." Psychology and floristry seem worlds apart, but both begin in the same place: a person, and their story.

And then came Ibiza...

In May 2026, on a family trip to Ibiza, a conversation began. Lillan had long dreamed of creating something of her own again. We talked about flowers, people, and all the moments they accompany — and about names. Then Elisabeth suggested one that brought everything together: Hansen Botanica. Our shared name, our Scandinavian roots, a family rediscovered, and something new growing from all that came before. The idea was simple: flowers shouldn't belong only to the grand occasions — they belong to life. To beginnings and endings, births and weddings, ordinary days and remembrance.

Hansen Botanica

Today, Hansen Botanica is Lillan's creative home — rooted in Uppsala and shaped by her experience, artistry and love of natural, thoughtful and beautiful floristry.

Elisabeth works alongside her behind the scenes, bringing another perspective from psychology, storytelling, communication and business development.

It feels somehow fitting that we are creating it together.

Because ours is a story that has contained separation and reunion, sadness and happiness, endings and unexpected new beginnings.

And flowers have appeared throughout it.

A bouquet from a daughter to the father she wanted to know.

Flowers sent to welcome a newly found sister to Sweden.

Wedding flowers created by one sister for another.

And now a floristry business born from a conversation between the two of us.

Lillan and Elisabeth Hansen.

Two sisters.

Two different paths.

One shared story.

And one shared belief:

Flowers belong to every chapter of life.

Hansen Botanica — flowers for every chapter of life