Where the blooms are

When Nikki Holder began planning her wedding last August, she knew one thing from the start. She wanted her flowers to be exquisite — and locally grown.

“I come from a small community where my parents owned a lumberyard, and I appreciate how local businesses give back to their community,” says Holder. “And I love the sustainability of local flowers.”

Holder is a regular customer at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and it was there that she connected with Sunborn Flower Farm, which has been gearing up to compete in the bridal market. She worked with Lisa Larsen, the farm’s floral designer.

Nikki and Cody Holder were married at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton in May, two weeks after she completed her degree at UW-Madison in human development and family studies with a focus on children of incarcerated parents.

Holder says it was a lot of work planning a wedding, writing a senior honors thesis, graduating and trying to find a job all at once. “But everything came together perfectly and I had lots of patient people — like Lisa — who were willing to accommodate my schedule.”

Holder met with Larsen at the beginning of September out at the farm and again in late April to pin down the specifics. Last-minute details were finalized in emails.

“It was easy to decide as I looked through her photos,” says Holder.” Every single arrangement was so reflective of the style we wanted for our wedding day.

“I had a crazy vision of a really big hoop, and they made a five-foot hoop for our ceremony from grapevines and a lot of things that came from their land,” she says. “It really added to the natural quality of the setting.

“For my bouquet, I didn’t want a tight little ball so Lisa filled it with peonies and shooting stars from their farm. It was wonderful. And it was reasonable,” says Holder.

Holder wanted some greenery running down the tables, but didn’t realize how expensive that can get. “It can cost $50 per foot, but Lisa was able to lay out greenery from her land to look tied. The greenery runner for five tables was $130. A lot less!

“The flowers exceeded my wildest expectations,” says Holder. “I told her my ideas and just let her do the designs. It was absolutely phenomenal.”

Debra Prinzing of Seattle is known as the architect of the so-called slow flower movement (also known as “field to vase” and “farm to vase”). Since Prinzing wrote The 50 Mile Bouquet in 2012, the loosely organized local cut flower growers movement has expanded throughout the U.S.

In Wisconsin, the number of cut flower operations grew from 64 in 2009 to 85 in 2014, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Their combined sales in 2014 were more than $3.5 million.

People like Holder appreciate that they are supporting local vendors, but there are other benefits as well: Compared to the flowers sold by many commercial florists, which arrive by plane from South America, locally grown cut flowers have less toxic residue, a smaller carbon footprint and a longer shelf life.

Taking local and natural one step further, Larsen finds some of her most popular blooms in the restored prairie surrounding one of their planted fields. “I forage out there,” she says, looking beyond the tightly-packed rows of vivid color to the grasses and flower heads bending in the wind on the hillside beyond. “Goldenrod, solidago, acinacea, shooting stars, wild baptisia. They are all out there, but we are careful how many we cut. Only a little here and there to preserve the prairie.”

Roots in a war

At one time most of the flowers in the United States were grown in greenhouses out East. Then air transportation made it possible to transport fresh-cut flowers from southern and west coast states, where it was not necessary to heat greenhouses through the winter months.

In 1991 the cut flower business morphed again when the U.S. suspended import duties on flowers from Colombia and other South American countries as part of the War on Drugs, trying to provide growers there with an alternative to growing coca for cocaine. By 2003, Colombia’s cheap, largely female, unskilled labor force and a constant flower-growing climate meant Colombian blooms outnumbered their U.S.-grown counterparts in American vases.

California supplies 20 to 25 percent of all cut flowers nationwide, but shoppers can assume that many flowers sold at supermarkets, florists or kiosks are imported from Colombia or Ecuador. For example, Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Whole Foods, Albertson’s and Costco all source most of their flowers from Colombia.

Many flowers on the market today may also be toxic. Because flowers are not food, chemical restrictions on what can be applied to them are far more lax. The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t test cut flowers for pesticides — bad news if you like to press your face into a beautiful bouquet.

It’s worse news for the people who grow those flowers, especially outside of the United States. Many of the agrochemicals are poisoning the water that the poorly paid agricultural workers drink. A report by the International Labor Rights Fund indicates that two-thirds of Colombian and Ecuadorian flower workers suffer work-related skin rashes, respiratory problems and eye problems while working 70-to 80-hour weeks in the peak seasons of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

The budding of a movement

Madison’s local cut-flower movement has deep roots. Carol Larsen, founder of Sunborn Flower Farm, was one of the first to sell cut flowers at the farmers’ market in 1974.

“We had just moved to the country, and I really wanted to grow a lot of things,” she recalls. “I had planted a lot of paste tomatoes for one of the co-ops, but when the tomatoes were ready, they didn’t want them. So I took them to the Dane County Farmers’ Market, which was two or three years old then.”

Larsen set up her stand with tomatoes and a bucket of marigolds she had thrown on the truck for good measure. “I didn’t sell the tomatoes, but I sold all the marigolds,” she says. “So I started growing flowers, taking them to the market, and sales just ramped up.”

In 2003, Larsen decided to grow flowers full time, adding greenhouses and employees to her farm.

Visitors enter her farm on a narrow lane through an archway of tree branches; parking is tucked among the flowering bushes surrounding an old farmhouse that serves as a home and floral design studio. Beyond are the ever-expanding fields of flowers Larsen now shares with her son, Hans, and his wife, Lisa.

Carol Larsen became a board member of the Dane County Farmers’ Market and joined the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. The group has more than 1,000 members, mostly small growers, and has been instrumental in raising awareness of local cut flowers.

In 2004 Larsen got two grants, one from Dane County and one from the state, to start a flower growing group to facilitate wholesale relationships. The group, called Fair Field Flowers, now sells to florists, grocery stores and event planners in the Madison area, and makes a weekly run along a Madison-Milwaukee corridor.

“It’s called a bucket run, an old wholesale florist term, because we have our flowers in buckets,” says Larsen. “We go to our customers, and they come out and pick what they want.”

The co-op’s truck is a Mercedes called Janice. Janice was insulated and refrigerated by another co-op member, Joe Schmitt, who has been growing flowers all his life. Schmitt is retiring this year, but has served as a mentor to many area flower growers.

“My grandfather grew flowers in Germany and immigrated here at the turn of the century to work in the first carnation greenhouse in this country. It was located in western Maryland,” says Schmitt. “Later my family moved to Long Island, where most of the flowers for the East Coast were grown at that time.”

He moved to the Madison area some 30 years ago and helped Vermont Valley Community Farm start its vegetable CSA. “Early on, I remembered how light flowers are compared to vegetables and decided to grow flowers again,” says Schmitt. “We started a flower bouquet component to the CSA and I grew a lot of flowers to make each week different. I ended up with way more flowers than I could use.”

Schmitt found a use for his surplus when he walked into Willy Street Co-op in 1995. “I saw these ratty-looking chrysanthemums from Ecuador,” he says. “That made no sense to me. Why would you import plants from South America in July to the place where you have the best soil in the world and just the right weather you need to grow flowers right here?

“Local flowers are superior to imported flowers no matter how quickly imports are flown in from Ecuador,” Schmitt says. “Almost all flowers are shipped out of water. It’s just too expensive to put a bucket of water on an airplane. By the time a flower shop has an imported flower, it may be weeks old, whereas locally, we can sell flowers that were cut the day before.

“Day old is actually better than flowers cut the same day,” he adds. “They improve by spending a night in water in temperatures very close to freezing. Coolers are really important to flower production. All the growers in the co-op have their own coolers, and I refrigerated Fair Field’s truck. Everything has always been in water and cold until it reaches the buyer’s doorstep. For that reason, retailers know our flowers are higher quality. We get applause when we show up in June and hugs at the end of the flower season in October.”

Florists get on board

More area retailers are appreciating the benefits of buying locally.

“The product is fresher than the stems we buy that are grown outside the state, and they tend to last longer,” says Jim Aldrich, president of Felly’s Flowers. “For event work like weddings and parties, it’s hard for us to count on the local growers because we may need a certain stem, and the local crop is not ready at that time, but we try to buy locally as much as possible.”

The only problem that Angela Pohlman, general merchandise manager for Willy Street Co-op, sees with local flowers is that they are not available year round. “Buying local keeps the money in our community, and the carbon footprint is lower.”

Diane Scholte of Metcalfe’s Market flower department, estimates they sell 25 percent more local flowers than they did four years ago. And she’s finding that customers are increasingly requesting them. Brenda Fenske, also of Metcalfe’s, says their local flowers come from Fair Field Flowers and Lewiston Perennial Farm. They also get local plants from Drumlin Nurseries in Deerfield and Karthauser & Sons in Germantown.

“Throughout the summer probably more than half the flowers in our cooler are local,” says Fenske. “Local flowers are less expensive because you don’t have to calculate shipping and customs, and we have great communications with the growers so we can make special requests.

“We love the wide assortment that we can’t get from our out-of-country suppliers,” adds Fenske. “We have a walk-in cooler here and it’s almost like you’re at the farmers’ market with such a wide selection. On a sunny day, people might like to shop at the farmers’ market, and on a rainy day, you can get the same flowers here.”

Deep roots, fresh branches

Of the Dane County Farmers’ Market 270 members, 47 grow some flowers and five sell only cut flowers. And more flower vendors keep sprouting at the market. Mai Yia Vang and her family added two acres of flower production to their produce stand last year. Vang says that vegetables and flowers are both hard work, but “putting bouquets together is fun, and it boosts my morale to see the expression on customers’ faces. There is something about them that changes the mood.”

Other farmers’ markets around town also have flower vendors. Tina Nelson runs Flowers for the People and sells at the Madison Eastside Farmers’ Market. Nelson, who grows her flowers organically, also does weddings and parties and offers a 10-week flower CSA.

“People pay a fee and get a fresh bouquet every week,” says Nelson. “It’s pretty wonderful. The cash flow is always tight at the beginning of the season and CSA members help me out a lot.”

Nelson hates to see flowers in grocery stores sitting in stagnant water. “It’s not good for the stem,” she says. “I think it’s hard for long-distance growers to love their flowers when they are just shipping them away. I absolutely love my flowers and take pride in them. It’s important to me that they are well taken care of.”

It’s a labor of love to be sure; growing flowers is hard work. “I do most of the weeding by hand, which can be overwhelming at times,” says Nelson. Plus, “flowers are so susceptible to diseases and pests.”

“Flower farming has all the challenges of any farming,” says Fair Field’s Schmitt. “You are checking the weather many times a day. It’s very much a skilled occupation with a steep learning curve.”

New flower farmers can get a jump start at the two-day Wisconsin Cut Flower Growers School run by John Hendrickson at the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. Hendrickson coordinated with Sunborn Flower Farm, Schmitt and other experienced flower farmers to create the program.

“Recently we have seen a fair uptick in the number of people interested in the business of growing cut flowers,” says Hendrickson. “This coming year we are going to have to find a bigger space.” The numbers have grown from 25 participants in 2004, its first year, to 45 now.

“This course is really needed,” says Schmitt, who does a flower cutting demonstration for the course. “It’s my intention to share what I know that new growers wouldn’t be able to find anyplace else. People who go into cutting flowers without any training tend to use clippers, which are going to lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. If you squeeze your hand thousands of times a day — you are going to pay a price for it. But if you cut with a knife, you are just building your biceps.”

“Flower farming is really hard work for a modest income, but people get excited about it,” says Hendrickson.

“It’s very physical. It’s manual equipment. Things are planted and harvested by hand, bunches put together by hand,” says Bill Zimmerman of Lewiston Perennial Farm, who has been growing flowers for the Madison market for 32 years.

“It’s a wonderful way to make a living,” says Schmitt. “And local cut flowers are pushing the rest of the cut flower industry in a greener direction. We and our customers are influencing this industry for the better.”

Lewiston Perennials Farm

Bill and Julie Zimmerman grow flowers year-round in protected greenhouses and three acres of field near Portage.

Sunborn Flower Farm & Florist

Carol, Hans and Lisa Larsen operate a small, expanding family flower farm near Mount Horeb.

Valor Acres

Va, Nhia Bee and Mai Yia Vang’s vegetables, fruit and flowers are available at the Dane County Farmers’ Market and grown near McFarland.

Flowers for the People

Tina Nelson grows bouquets for the Eastside Farmers’ Market and flowers for special occasions and operates a bouquet CSA near Madison.

Snug Haven

Judy Hageman, Bill Warner and Danielle Wood grow flowers as well as spinach near Belleville.

Abundance Acres

Terri Holzem provides unusual cut flowers at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. She specializes in wedding flowers, many from her own garden in Madison.

Star Valley Flowers

John Zehrer is the largest cut flower producer in the Midwest on land near Gays Mills.

Old Stone House Farm

Gina Graham and Cheryl Burton grow specialty cut flowers on a farm-stay B&B near Random Lake.

Mad Lizzies Flower Farm

Katy and Dale Ripp’s cut flower operation on a farm near Cross Plains has you-pick days.

Five Green Acres

Mary Jo and Andrew Borchardt combine cut flowers with sheep, wool and pastured meat near Poynette.

Fair Field Flowers

Jeanie McKewan and Michael Staver work with growers across southern Wisconsin, including Joe Schmitt and Carol Larsen, and distributes in Madison, Milwaukee and elsewhere.