Grower News

After a morning of picking flowers, Abra Hawley heads home with a bucket of fresh flowers. Steve Kohls / Brainerd Dispatch EMILY — It’s in a small hayfield hugging a picturesque country road — a secret garden obscured by a grove of trees. Rows of petite cosmos, feathery amaranth, wispy zinnias and stately gold and maroon sunflowers dance in the breeze, spreading their petals wide to gulp in the sun’s rays. It’s here where Abra Hawley nurtures a patch of more than 100 varieties of blooms destined for the arms of lovers and the centers of dinner tables. Hawley Hill Gardens is one of a growing number of cut flower farms blooming in the Brainerd lakes area and surrounding communities, part of a reemerging domestic floral market riding the wave of renewed consumer focus on supporting local economies. “One of the big drives behind the local American grown flower movement is to minimize the environmental impact, minimize the carbon footprint, keep things more local, keep dollars in the community, support growers that are using environmentally friendly growing practices,” Hawley, 28, said from her kitchen table in mid-July. “It’s employing local folks and bringing back the industry of cut flowers to the United States.” It’s a lofty ethos derived from humble beginnings for Abra and husband Tim, both the products of families immersed in gardening and small-scale farming. For Hawley, the urge to grow flowers began as one of a number of do-it-yourself projects she pursued for the couple’s 2016 wedding reception. Two years of consideration and research later, the first seeds were planted for what would become a tiny farm offering locally grown cut flowers and greenery. It wasn’t an easy task, converting a portion of the field to a flower garden. Tilling the land, digging a well, acquiring electricity, installing a fence and a drip irrigation system — the couple undertook all of these jobs, on top of taking care of seedlings that would fill the space. Hawley faced numerous challenges in her first year, including an unexpectedly clay-like soil in an otherwise sandy field that led to […]

Source: www.brainerddispatch.com