You may be wondering . . .

Do you really grow your own flowers?  Yes, we do grow as many flowers as we can in the Garden by the Gate. You are welcome to visit the Garden at any time during the growing season.

What happens if there is a drought, or deer eat all the flowers, or there’s a tornado the day before my wedding? While we think we are pretty good at managing the garden for maximum bloom in time for each wedding, there are things which any farmer, including flower farmers, just cannot control. For this, we have our friendly, local, flower wholesale seller who can provide whatever is needed to supplement our home-grown blooms.

And by the way, we really did have a tornado touch down at the Garden the day before a wedding! With the help of flashlights and headlamps (think coal miner) and a little extra work, all flowers were provided to the bridal party without anyone even suspecting what had happened.

Do I have to have whatever kind of flowers you are growing or can you grow something just for me? When planning the garden, we definitely look ahead at weddings booked for the coming season and plant flowers to meet the bride’s requests. One year it was an extra row of white flowers for an all-white reception, last year it was a row of orange cosmos for an orange and navy wedding, and this winter I sat down with a fan of color swatches for an ombre color scheme and chose flower seeds and bulbs to match each bridesmaid’s dress.

How do locally grown flowers help the environment and reduce the carbon footprint? The biggest effect that the global flower industry has on the environment is through transportation. Flowers are shipped via jet, truck, and delivery vans from anywhere in the world, including Columbia, New Zealand, or Japan, to U.S. distributors then they are trucked to local warehouses where they are then delivered by van to florist shops. All the while energy is used to keep the flowers chilled.