Читать книгу Cool Flowers - Lisa Mason Ziegler - Страница 10

One

HOW FLOWERS CHANGED MY LIFE

My journey to flower farming reads almost like a gardening love story. Growing flowers and living what I consider “the good life” of faith, family and farming leaves little on my want list. It all started because I got the guy and he came with a big garden. Actually, it was far more than just a garden – it was a family homestead that also came with a strong tradition and history of gardening. I was totally smitten from the start by him and this way of life.

Growing up, gardening experiences at my house were all about shady conditions. Our yard came alive with bed after bed of beautiful azaleas and rhododendrons. I remember my dad bringing home the many coffee cans, each with a little baby azalea started by a friend, and our family spending a Saturday planting them until dark. There wasn’t much tending required afterwards, just the annual mulching with pine straw that made itself available falling from our pine trees. Easter egg hunts and spring family birthday parties always went hand in hand with the white, pink, red and purple blossoms of azaleas in the background.

As an adult, weekly visits to my grandma’s home began to spark my interest in gardening. She shared little bits and pieces of her garden with me, and that led me to the library to explore garden books and magazines. I never dreamed I would be so moved and stirred by all the possibilities that a garden could hold. I was wooed by the beautiful photos and wanted a garden of my own.

Steve and Lisa live in Newport News, Virginia, on the Ziegler family homestead with their Golden Retriever, Babs.

While exploring my newfound hobby of gardening, I met Steve and asked him out. My interest in him at this point was based solely on his good looks and a friend’s suggestion that he was a good one. Little did I know the treasure I would find in both him and his garden.

During our first dinner date, it didn’t take long for our conversation to come around to gardening. Living as I was under a deep canopy of oak trees, my little experience had been strictly in shade gardening. Turned out he was quite the vegetable grower. So after our second lunch date, we went by his house to see what he was growing.

Eureka! His little spot of paradise was sitting right smack dab in full sun! I mean no shade in sight – to someone like me who had been searching for a ray of sunshine in her garden, this was incredible. His home was definitely a bachelor’s pad, but the garden, oh my goodness – paradise. Most of the property was in beautiful vegetable garden, and there were many plantings around that his grandmother and other family members had started over the years. I just wanted to explore and see what was growing.

Just imagine discovering this spot while living in a city of 180,000 that had little if any undeveloped open land. Steve’s home had belonged to his grandparents. It was one of the homes built in the 1930s in what is known as “The Colony” in the Mennonite community located in Newport News, Virginia. The bungalow-type house sat on one and a quarter acres adjoining a 40-acre horse boarding farm. The neighboring fields make this property feel as though you are in the country even though you are in the middle of the city – a treasure in itself.

When I came on the scene, Steve and his family had a large vegetable garden to feed the family in season and for freezing and canning for out-of-season. Grandma Ziegler had planted many hydrangeas, daffodils and camellias on the property over the years. Grandpa Ziegler left his mark also with many fig and pecan trees, grape vines and, most importantly, his years of adding leaf mold to the gardens.

I now grow the flowers of my dreams because of all the sunshine in Steve’s gardens.

Steve had been living in this place as a bachelor for many years before I came along. In addition to gardening, he had an interest in motorcycles. The house apparently was perfect for re-building a 1968 Harley Davidson Chopper in the living room! So glad I missed this. The stories this house could tell: from the babies born to the Brunk family who built the home in the ‘30s to Harleys roaring up the front steps in the ‘80s – thank goodness walls can’t talk!

Popping the Question

Steve and I hadn’t been dating long when I popped the question: “May I do a little gardening at your place?” I just couldn’t resist all that sunshine. I could grow… well, I wasn’t even sure what I could grow yet, but I was ready to try. He happily replied yes.

So I planted some flowers that I had never before been able to grow. At this point, I just fell in love with the whole gardening life and the one who introduced me to it.

Around here, the story goes that I married Steve for his gardening dowry. Of course, that isn’t true! I married Steve because the same things make his heart race as mine: God, family and the love of a garden. However, he did come with a couple of Troy-Bilt tillers, composted land, lots of old hydrangeas, and a dump truck to boot!

Steve and I married in 1995. We had two complete households and gardens. We would ultimately live in his home; however, his place as previously described was a bit of a man cave, so renovations were in order.

We began by packing his house, so he could make the move into my house after the wedding. Next, his house was gutted. The house was taken down to the studs and everything replaced. Keeping it in our regular family style, my brother was the builder and he made the job as painless as possible. The icing on the cake was that my dad custom-made all the trim in the house to replace what was there. Eighteen months later we moved in.

I dug the entire shade garden from my house and brought it with us.

My relocated shade garden that now lives under the tulip magnolia tree that Steve’s grandparents planted many years ago. Pictured: hellebores, primroses, bleeding hearts, and cyclamen.

My First Time with Flowers

The first year in the Ziegler homestead, I continued the tradition of large vegetable gardens filled with tomatoes, beans, sweet corn, peas, onions, potatoes and all the classics for good eating and storing up. Steve loves growing sweet corn, just like his grandfather did. They loved sharing it with friends and neighbors as much as eating it. I was also busy with projects, putting my own touch on the landscape around our new home, including planting my first 10-foot row of zinnias beside the vegetable garden.

During this time, my grandmother suffered a massive stroke. I was so proud of those zinnias that one day I picked several and took them along on my weekly visit to see her. What a fuss these garden flowers created! I entered the front doors of the nursing home carrying about two dozen zinnias and started down the hall. Folks who had never taken notice before now approached me, saying, “My mother grew those!” or “Zinnias! I had those in my garden.” It was one of those moments that makes your heart swell.

Zinnias are the flower that started it all for me and brought memories to the surface for so many.

By the time I made it to my grandmother’s room all the way at the very end of the hall I had a pack of flower garden lovers following me. So began my weekly harvest of zinnias to take on my visit, along with pint mason jars to fill and place on the dining tables for everyone to enjoy as they reminisced.

The experience of harvesting that single row of flowers to take to the nursing home primed me for what was to come. A “big idea” was starting to form in my gardener’s brain.

I Become a Flower Farmer

During the winter of 1997, I discovered the book The Flower Farmer, by Lynn Byczynski. As I began reading this book, everything started falling into place. I was finally in a position that I could explore another career. I had that garden dowry of the necessary equipment, land, even many plants, such as hydrangeas, lily of the valley and peonies, that would complement what I would grow. Steve encouraged me to tackle this full-force. He loved the idea that I might “work the land” as my career, so he was onboard from the get-go.

The blooms from the old hydrangeas Steve’s grandmother planted gave my new business venture exactly what it needed – luscious blooms with little effort on my part.

After much head-scratching and nail-biting, I was excited and ready to get started. But it was late summer – what to do? So I hit the books again for a little more research. I found that there were some flowers that could be planted in the fall to bloom the following spring; they were called hardy annuals. It sounded like a great way to start my flower-farming career right then and there, so I bought the recommended seeds and began.

‘Chantilly’ snapdragons, the earliest snap to bloom in our gardens, often by the first of April.

In my gardening ignorance, I never questioned if it would work or not. I never asked myself if my new little plants would survive our winter. Would there actually be flowers come spring? It seemed so simple to me then – the books I was reading said it would work, so I did it. My gift for focusing on the positive rather than the “what-ifs” took me right through that first winter untroubled by doubt. How could I know that this first blind leap of faith would change the course of my life? My fearless plunge into fall planting had a lot to do with the success I now experience as a commercial cut-flower farmer.

I planted my first commercial garden that fall – hardy annuals that included snapdragons, sweet peas, sweet William, dill, Rudbeckia, and larkspur. When the following March rolled around, I began to start more seeds of the tender season annuals recommended, like zinnias, cockscombs, and lemon basil, to be transplanted out once the soil warmed.

As spring crept in, the fall-planted flowers began to bloom. Steve was so excited for me and asked every day, “Are you taking your flowers down to the florist today?” “Not yet,” I said. I was full of reasons. But really, I just had cold feet. Now that my garden flowers were blooming, I began to wonder, would anyone really want them? As the days passed and more and more flowers began to bloom and I didn’t make any move to market them, Steve gave me the nudge I needed.

His pep talk was simple. “Take the flowers down there and offer them. If they don’t buy them, we just won’t ever shop there again.” Now I could do that. Something about knowing I wouldn’t have to face them again if they turned me down – I married a smart man!

The Road to Success

Steve’s strategy worked. I felt confident enough to fill the buckets with fragrant sweet pea blooms and mounds of hydrangea blossoms and I headed out. My plan, as suggested in Lynn Byczynski’s book, was to offer free flower samples to the customers to show that they are conditioned and of good quality. Well, that plan got blown out of the water soon after my arrival!

One of my first commercial gardens of hardy annuals.

At this point, I didn’t have a truck, so the flowers were in the back seat of my car. I drove to the shop, hoping that the head designer and buyer would be on hand. I walked in with my buckets; he was there, on the phone with his back to me. That was perfect, really. It gave me a moment to collect myself and put my buckets up on the counter. I waited.

Staple flowers in my spring and early summer gardens: (from left top) yarrow, Ammi, black-eyed Susans, feverfew, and bupleurum.

While still speaking to the phone customer, he slowly turned to me, and his eyeballs got about the size of tea saucers. His next words were to his phone customer: “Hold just a moment, please,” and then to me, “I’ll buy them all!”

Then he jumped right back on the phone with the customer. But wait just a minute, I was thinking, I’m here to drop off samples, not to sell them! Thank goodness he stayed on the phone for a couple of more minutes while I figured out plan B. Once off the phone, he was thrilled with the flowers and the prospect that more were coming. He went on to take me under his wing to help in any way. He showed me how to package, gave me tips, and helped me when I had problems.

My first season went so fast. I realized that I absolutely loved growing masses of flowers. That winter as I planned my garden, it expanded. I needed to also expand my customer base or pretty soon I would have way more cut flowers than customers. It wasn’t hard to find more customers. The commercial trade had an appreciation and a demand for locally grown quality flowers. With each passing season, my garden and love of growing flowers increased.

Soon after the beginning of my farm life, my sister, Suzanne Mason Frye, joined me. First it was to help out at the farmer’s markets I attended; as my business grew so did her job. She has nurtured the business in those areas she loves – photography and making bouquets. My gardening story wouldn’t be complete without saying I would have never come so far or ever reached so high if she hadn’t been standing beside me all the way.

Suzanne Mason Frye and Lisa Mason Ziegler

Sixteen years later, our urban farm, now close to three acres in size, has one and a quarter acres in working cutting garden. We continue to sell to the local floral commercial trade, through our on-farm pick-up Garden Share program and Subscription Bouquet drop-offs. In 2012, we also began selling to supermarkets. All of our flowers are grown outdoors in the garden – no greenhouses for us. We follow organic and sustainable practices. Our harvest season is May through October, producing over 10,000 stems of flowers each week.

Maintaining what may be the last working farm in what was once a farming community is an honor that Steve and I treasure. Our commitment to causing no harm and leaving the land better then we found it is our daily goal. Growing cut flowers is the fruit of our labor, but most of all, we just want to be good stewards of all that has been given.

I hope that sharing our experience with growing and loving these amazing flowers will make your own floral journey a wonderful and joyful one.

“The Inn”

A hand-colored photo of the Ziegler family homestead in 1941.

The shed pictured on the cover of this book is one of the original buildings on our farm. “The Inn” got its name because it and the other building were used as cottages and temporary homes to many visitors through the years. Farm laborers, travelers and families moving to this community all enjoyed the hospitality of these buildings. Outfitted with potbelly stoves and a string of light bulbs, The Inn had all that was needed to provide for its residents.

When I moved onto the property in 1996, one of the first jobs I tackled was to clean out The Inn. It looked to me to be the perfect potting shed. Oh, the treasures I found! After relocating all the wonderful family pieces discovered inside, I went to work on the floor. It was covered in old linoleum. What I found when I began pulling it up was incredible. The entire floor was covered in front pages of the newspaper during WWII. The Battle of Midway, and countless other historical news stories, covered the floor. I sat on the floor for hours reading. Unfortunately, they were in such bad shape they couldn’t even be lifted off the floor without disintegrating. This lovely building has stood the test of time and today works as a wonderful gardening shed for my flower farm.