Ray Doolan Web Site:  http://www.dublinfloralcreations.com/ Ray Doolan is a native of Swansea, Massachusetts, and graduated from Bristol County Agricultural High School. At a very young age, he found interest in horticulture, studying floriculture and landscape design. Ray went on to get his business degree from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. His love for flowers and various plant life brought him many years of landscape designing and planting for private homes and businesses. In 1994 Ray was living in Dublin, New Hampshire when he was inspired by his next door neighbor, a retired educator Barbara Carll, to combine his artistic abilities and knowledge of plant material. The pressed flower business was germinated and grew. Growing, pressing, and designing an artistic product in its various forms, Ray takes great pride incorporating wedding invitations, birth announcements, photographs or other mementos with his original one-of-a-kind designs. He has developed special techniques of pressing his garden flowers so their colors will last for decades. The Florida climate lured him to settle in Lakeland, along with the desire to be close to family that had settled in the Orlando area in the late 1940’s. Ray immediately began the process of landscaping and planting upon arrival at his Lakeland home in 2004. The plantings at his home are a combination of flowers to press for his art, and the enjoyment of horticulture which has been his lifelong passion. Ray’s underling philosophy has always been, "People that work close to the earth are close to God", and he is thankful that God has given him the ability to recognize and use this in his everyday life.