“My love of flowers actually started from my grandmother,” Leslie Baeckeroot says. “She was a floral designer and she taught me everything. From a very young age, I picked it up. She also had a love for gardening; she could pretty much make anything grow or regrow.”
Today, Baeckeroot says she’s working her dream job and has turned a hobby turned passion into a budding career, as she’s the conservatory manager for Bellagio’s beautiful Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.
Before Baeckeroot put down roots in Las Vegas, she was born and raised in Detroit, Mich. It’s in this city that she began her professional career starting out in small floral shops, eventually joining big-box retailer Michaels as its head floral designer. Around the mid-’90s, she moved to Tucson, Ariz.—“I just fell in love with the West and the mountains”—and continued her career working at top hotels in their floral department. It was during this time that she made a visit to Las Vegas and first set her sights on Bellagio’s conservatory. “And I remember thinking ‘Wow, this place is amazing!’” she says.
In 2001, she made the move to Vegas. She first worked for a high-end, private floral design firm—clients included Celine Dion—and kept an eye out for a job at Bellagio. She joined MGM Resorts International about a year after she moved here, working her way up the ladder, working in the in-house floral departments across many of the company’s properties on the Strip. In 2003, a job finally opened at Bellagio and she was hired as a floral designer. She’s been blooming ever since—getting her current title in 2019.
“I work within the conservatory and all that goes into it,” she says. “Top to bottom, left to right, there are so many working parts behind the scenes, but this is where I am meant to be. This is the highest affinity that I aspire to be. I love coming to work every day.”
Libation: Worldly Old-Fashioned
After or before you make a stop at the Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, be sure to pay a visit to neighboring Petrossian Bar. At this upscale lounge, where guests can enjoy live piano music, order the new Worldly Old-Fashioned. Available in two sizes—the small serves two people, the bigger size serves four people—the stunning glass globes hold a mixture of Yamazaki 12-Year Japanese whisky, WhistlePig 10-Year rye, Craigellachie 13-Year Scotch, Demerara syrup and Angostura bitters.
Benefit: For an enchanting experience, Baeckeroot suggests checking out the conservatory at night.
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