Devoted to Connecting Beauty of Plants and People
By Dianna Troyer
Immersed in her autumn dahlia harvest, horticulturist Vanessa Kuemmerle said she vows to never retire from her lifelong mission of “promoting art and all things to do with plants, gardening, flowers and connecting people to beauty and the natural world.”
Her devotion has led her from working at Google Campus in California to Maine where she owns horticulture businesses and most recently to southeastern Idaho where she grows flowers for destination wedding planners in resort towns of Sun Valley and Jackson.
“My whole life has been devoted to plants and will be until I take my last breath. They have been my friends, and I serve them and they serve me. The Dahlias in autumn are epic and blooming up a storm. We’re juggling the harvest with preparing beds for fall planting—larkspur and other cool annuals, perennials, tulip bulbs, and Ranunculus corms.”
In partnership with Lorin Harrison at Florage Farms near Blackfoot, whom she met through mutual friends, she described herself as “co-conspirator” at the 12-acre enterprise. Harrison juggles his time at the farm with his job of maintaining cell phone towers. They and their staff of nine employees and seasonal workers care for 100 varieties of flowers in three greenhouses and fields.
After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California College of the Arts at Oakland, Kuemmerle has been working more than 30 years as a horticulturalist, landscape designer, floral designer and a flower farmer.
At Google Inc., she was lead plant designer for Google Campus in California working with Olin Landscape Architects, LTD. She worked for Apple Inc. as lead horticultural consultant and design for retail stores worldwide.
She also owns Veritas Flora and Vee Horticulture in the mountains of southwestern Maine near Lovell.
What is her favorite flower? Chocolate Cosmos that smells like chocolate?
“I’m a bit of a dichotomy. I gravitate to the obscure and delicate species like Anthriscus and Heuchera as well as the most bodacious blooms, like Tall Bearded Iris and Dahlias. I’m also a big fan of foliage, with its textures, shapes and colors. Foliage is the unsung hero of most flower arrangements.”
Florage Farms has a three-decade reputation for “providing unusual and hardy flowers that florists cannot get shipped with the freshness and quality of what we deliver from the farm,” Harrison said. “Our flowers are known for their long-lasting blooms.”
Florage Farms has an ideal location, being two hours from Jackson, Wyoming to the east and another two hours to Sun Valley, Idaho to the west.
They work with wedding planners, who hire floral designers seeking unusual varieties of locally grown flowers and ornamental foliage to create visually stunning settings.
“Flowers are an emotional purchase, so clients rarely negotiate about prices when planning destination weddings,” Harrison said. “In a niche market like this, networking happens fast, so planners hear about us.”
The wedding season coincides with their growing season from spring through fall.
“We start before Easter with tulips and daffodils,” he said. “There are so many varieties of tulips in all colors and petals, some that are double or others with fringe. The Angelique tulip looks like a peony.”
After the tulips are harvested, the bulbs are dug up by hand and will be replanted for the next season.
Some of the farm’s most popular flowers are varieties of Tulips, Filipendula, Ranunculus, Dahlia, Veronica, Bells of Ireland, Snapdragons, and Sweet Peas.
“People like Ranunculus because the petals open and close during the day, like butterfly wings,” he said.
Despite a short growing season, intense sun, and a high soil pH of 8.2, some flowers grow well in eastern Idaho, including Scabiosa, Delphinium, Anemone, Lisianthus, and Icelandic Poppies.
By November when another growing season has ended, they do research and plan what tours to take of European nurseries to see what flower varieties are being developed.
Last April during a tour in the Netherlands that was organized for growers, they saw new varieties of flowers that will be on the market in five to seven years. New Ranunculus varieties will be a light lavender, pink blushes, and white. It can take more than a decade to hybridize, trial, and release new varieties.
“Raising vegetables and flowers has always been a hobby,” Harrison said. “It’s fun to have a small farm, and this one with so many different crops to manage keeps us engaged.” ISI
