Alright here we go my first blog post. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?
Marysville Ohio has been my family’s home since 2013 and we have been loving every bit of our little slice of the country.
Since we can from the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, gardening and growing flowers wasn’t something that I did at our old house besides taking care of a few flowerpots on my porch, pulling weeds from our builder grade landscaping and mowing our postage stamp of a yard.
In contrast, our Marysville home came with 5.5 acres, woods, a creek, a horse barn, a small fruit tree orchard, and a 15 foot by 30-foot vegetable garden. Talk about a change of pace.
The first spring, I downsized the veggie garden. That 15ft x 30ft garden space was just a little too much for me to handle. I was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. My husband, Tim, built me four 4ft by 6ft raised garden bed boxes. Those were more manageable.
After filling in those raised beds with soil, my two sons (who were ages 4 and 2 at the time) and I selected some seeds and veggie starts then we got to work.
Lettuce, strawberries, carrots, cucumbers, peppers and some herbs made up our first go at growing food. My boys thoroughly enjoyed the process, but we didn’t have a ton of success. The biggest win was the cucumbers. My boys weren’t fans of cucumbers but after watching them grow they decided to give them a try. Now they love them. It was worth all the work just for that.
In the summer of 2016, I finally added some flowers to my growing list. Zinnias to be precise. These delightful blooms brought me so much joy. I loved cutting them and bringing a handful into the house every week. They also got bonus points because they were super easy to grow and didn’t need a lot of care because with 2 young boys and pregnant with baby #3, I just didn’t have time for fussy plants in my life.
Fast forward to the Summer of 2018, I decided I want to add some more cutting flowers to my small vegetable garden but I wasn’t sure where to start so I reached out to my mom who just so happened to have a degree in Horticulture from Ohio State University. Both my mom and I spent that summer researching and learning about cutting flowers. As I learned more and more, I got inspired.
If I was going to expand my garden a little bit to grow more flowers for me, why not expand the garden even more to grow flowers for my community?!?!?!
This thought opened up a whole other can of worms.
That fall I started prepping my gardens and I spent the whole winter crop planning.
Finally in the summer of 2019, Jen’s Flower Garden was open for business. I’ll never forget that first handful of flowers that came out of the garden. I was so happy, proud, excited and terrified all at the same.
Things look a little bit different now as I enter
season #5 of growing flowers. Things are more complex, new flower varieties are being grown and new sales channels to navigate.
But what hasn’t changed is my mantra:
Flowers for every day, because every day should be celebrated.
