Cool Flowers. Lisa Mason Ziegler
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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!
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.
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.
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,