If wedding ceremonies are the bread and butter of Western North Carolina’s budding cut-flower industry, then a monthly subscription service is the scrumptious, locally-sourced jam. At least, that’s the case for one mountain farm.
Based in Marshall, Carolina Flowers finds space between simplicity and indulgence with their latest venture, which delivers an in-season bouquet to customers’ doorsteps. April might see tulips, ranunculus, and anemones; May is better suited to snapdragons, foxgloves, and delphinium; and June blooms a mixed bag. “You’ll need all your fingers and toes to count what’s growing by this time of year,” promises the company’s website. “The fields are full of color and texture.”
Though introduced late last fall, the concept, the brainchild of journalist turned agronomist Emily Patrick, has already taken root among locals. “I want to give them an experience that is good and pure: a real expression of the world,” she says. “Flowers are a simple joy.”
Patrick is quite the expert on growing poppies and rare strains of gladioli down south. Renting two acres on a retired tobacco farm, she and partner/community ceramist, Josh Copus, have cultivated a flourishing business model as diversified as the fields they sow.
“We have a lot of arms,” says Patrick, who represents at local farmers’ markets, displays arrangements at downtown eateries, and sells hundreds of dahlia blooms to stores across North Carolina. “Wholesale is, like, our behind-the-scenes secret.”
In many ways, the self-taught grower is reawakening a sleeping giant. Once a profitable venture, America’s cut-flower industry fell to serious trade deficits in the late 20th century. Patrick’s great-grandparents experienced the crunch firsthand. Conservative Mennonites from Pennsylvania, they made an honest living at growing until business was crippled by a one-two punch: first, the ’70s oil crisis, and then the first Bush administration’s war on drugs, which called for subsidizing South American flower farmers. Domestic production soon slumped and never quite recovered, with 80 percent of America’s flowers now coming from places like Ecuador and Colombia.
But the tides are turning, Patrick predicts. “More people want to know their farmer,” she says. “They want to buy local.”
To keep up with demand, she adopts a four-season approach, planting hardier varieties like poppies and sweet peas in October, overwintering dahlias in cooler months, and nurturing amaryllis and paperwhites indoors for winter delivery, with hopes of eventually establishing a greenhouse. This permaculture-inspired philosophy ensures that Carolina Flowers can always deliver, even when oaks drop their leaves and roses droop.
“It’s either me, Josh, or someone else hand delivering the subscriptions. We haven’t invented a drone yet,” Patrick teases. But she also gets at a trade secret most discredit: patience. Growing palm-size dahlias and blood-orange amaryllis takes time, especially when forgoing fertilizers and pesticides.
“We try to be good stewards of our resources, and our resources include this rich mountain soil,” she continues. “Josh digs clay right out of our flower fields and I, of course, use the soil to grow. We both make a living from the dirt, and that feels good.”
For more information, visit www.flowersnc.com.