BANGOR – Her name is Hawaiian and means “heavenly flower.” And her floral arrangement won second place at the Bangor State Fair on opening day, July 25.

Leilani Boylan is not quite 3. The Bangor toddler, who celebrates her birthday Sept. 8, was up against children up to age 12 in her first competition.

“She got second place and she got $4,” her mother, Kathy, said, adding that Leilani used the money to buy tickets to jump on a trampoline.

Kathy Boylan, who has participated in craft events in the Bangor State Fair for three years, said she and Leilani picked plants from the yard of their Bangor home, including pine boughs, cedar, balsam, lavender, bee balm, larkspur, calendula ferns, amaranth and some wildflowers. The little girl determined which flowers she wanted in her arrangement.

“I had one piece of amaranth out there and she grabbed it,” Kathy said.

And Leilani basically arranged the flowers herself.

“I had three [floral arrangements] that I was doing and she just proceeded and did hers,” Kathy stated.

She said that Leilani got frustrated when some of the plants she was arranging started breaking. So Kathy helped her by putting the ends of plants that Leilani selected into the vase and letting her push them in the rest of the way.

“But it was where she wanted them,” the little girl’s mom said.

Boylan, who has always had an interest in flowers and the arts, has been doing floral arrangements since 1998, when she moved to the family’s home in Bangor during the ice storm. What really got her started, she said, was arranging some flowers regularly for an elderly neighbor so that he could take something nice to his wife, who was hospitalized with a stroke.

Boylan, who won several first, second and third places and honorable mentions for her floral arrangements, photography and needlework at the Bangor State Fair, is self-taught. She has two bookcases full of gardening books and reads them the way other people read novels. She said she had wanted to study botany in college, but was led to pursue bookkeeping instead.

Both mother and daughter plan to participate in other fairs throughout the state.

“We’re just having fun,” Boylan said.