Urban flower farms bloom in St. Louis

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.”