Growing a Lifetime of Flowers
Olivia Spitzer
They say hindsight is 20/20. For Patricia Dabush of Meadowbrook Gardens, her past can feel like highway 20 - and it has always led right to where she is today. “My parents weren’t really farmers. They were like Green Acres – [part of] the ‘back to land’ers movement. [They] were getting older and thinking about selling the property. I wanted to raise my kids like I was raised, play in the creek, and throw rocks – I wanted to live on the land. I was like, ‘Wait! Don’t sell the property!’”
Born and raised in Oregon, Dabush spent years exploring what there was to see in the wide world. “I studied ecology, sustainable forestry, mycology, herbal medicine.” She lived abroad, in the American southwest, and then in California. “My friend was transitioning from growing vegetables to growing flowers. I started growing flowers with her. We did a couple weddings, had a CSA, sold at wineries.” Dabush found a particular joy in flower farming, different from all the other avenues she’d traveled. Then the phone rang.
“I not only had the opportunity to help this property but also to make a viable economic product that can sustain my family. [I could] create natural space on the property, planting natives and reforesting.” In a lot of ways, the chance represented the intersection of all her biggest goals: to be a steward of sustainable land, to be the parent she imagined, to run her own business, to live near her family. It felt like the world was in alignment for her. That is, everything except one forest critter. “I had a beaver who was fighting me on the reforesting thing,” she says. There is a smile in her voice as she remembers. She laughs and pretends to talk to the beaver, “’I’m trying to help you out here!’”
When tackling her new profession in her old home, she carried all of what she learned with her. “I lived in Arizona for seven years and I think I’m traumatized by the sun. I like working outside when it’s raining and cool. The shoulder seasons are actually my favorite – the fall and the spring. The changes happen a lot faster, which is challenging. Tulips, done, peonies, done, every week something new is coming and its fresh and exciting.”
Dabush shoulders a lot of the farm work on her own. Living with her parents provides childcare and her husband is there to assist with what she calls, “the big pushes.” She explains, “the big labor stuff- he’s a machine. He can build a bed by hand with a hoe so fast!” She snaps her fingers. But when you look at the flowers Dabush brings to market, all the dedication you see is hers. “On my friend’s farm you had to work for her for years before she let you harvest. It’s not like picking cucumbers. You chuck a lot of flowers, [there’s] a lot of quality control. I do the planning, planting, harvesting, all of that.”
Hillsdale Farmers’ Market was the first and only farmers’ market Dabush applied to for the 2023 season. Her family already had a connection to the neighborhood, through her daughter’s preschool. “I am really blown away by how amazingly supportive everyone is. People here don’t mind that sometimes there’s an insect on my flowers, because I don’t spray. People get it and I really appreciate that.”
She loves the connection she makes with shoppers and the conversations she is able to have, vending her own flowers. “The biggest thing I want people to know about me is how into sustainability I am. Flowers are a pathway to sustainability for me. I do no spray, lots of native planting, I don’t plant invasive species, or sell invasive species.”
Her work is local but her eye is on a major shift in the cut flower industry. “I don’t think people are aware that almost all the flowers you see are grown in South America. 99% comes on an airplane from Ecuador.” The concern there, she explains, is carbon emissions. When buying bouquets from Meadowbrook Gardens, you are buying flowers that drove here from just across the river. The prospect of stopping those large commercial flower flights is huge to Dabush. “There are more and more new small flower farmers popping up everywhere.” She’s thrilled by this development. Dabush does not see her fellow farmers as competition. “The market is not saturated while we are still flying flowers on airplanes.”
Catch Dabush and Meadowbrook Gardens at Hillsdale Farmers’ Market through the next shoulder season – autumn- and until the end of October.