The urban flower farming scene in St. Louis is blooming. This week, more than 400 growers converged downtown for the first-ever conference of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers.
In its inaugural event, the conference focused on urban flower farming.
“People are growing high-value, unique floral crops in high density in the city — and selling that directly to customers,” said Miranda Duschack, co-founder of Urban Buds, a flower farm in Dutchtown. “This urban flower farming movement is really a catalyst for re-envisioning and reshaping what we can think of as both agriculture and urban spaces.”
Mimo Davis, who co-founded Urban Buds with Duschack, pointed out that bringing the conference to St. Louis is also a way of putting on a public demonstration of urban flower farming.
“I wanted to share with people that you could plant where you are, to change that paradigm of what farming is,” she said. “When people think of farms, they think of acreage and rolling hills, big, long rows of beautiful crops growing.”
“If you have dirt, you can plant in it,” she added. “We wanted to really share that with our flower-farming community, friends [and] family all across the United States.”
To hear more from the Urban Buds’ Miranda Duschack and Mimo Davis, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcast or by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Ulaa Kuziez is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
