The Seeds
Our Story
of
The initial drive for starting Garden Sapphire began just as our entire world began changing when we were expecting our first child. At this time, it presented itself as the best opportunity to begin the planning work for our own cut flower operation. We were able to lay the groundwork, but no ground could be broken until after our time living in Washington, DC. Instead of seeds, we were working on growing our two sweet boys.
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Four years later, we were blessed enough to escape the city amidst the covid lock-downs, to find our new home in Summerville, SC. Now that we had a sizeable yard, it was the perfect time to start tearing up the freshly laid sod. What better way to spend the time while being mostly restricted from leaving the home?
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Now that a few years have past, our yard is being tastefully tailored to become our first home base for growing and selling beautiful cut flowers. With each year, we have added more rows of production, and we hope to someday outgrow our small backyard space in order to advance into a larger destination garden and growing operation.
Meet Kristie
After being faced with the ultimatum to find a career focus or forget college, I was forced to throw all caution to the wind and landed my choice on Horticulture. After receiving a Bachelor's degree from Penn State in Horticulture, I can faithfully say that sometimes the universe can unexpectedly lead us on the exact path we need to take to achieve happiness. I'm not sure I would have known how much I truly respect and adore the beauty and mysteries of nature if I didn't follow a career working with plants.
My passion for cut flowers began during a college internship at a DC based flower farm, Wollam Gardens. Between the long hours and the variable weather conditions, it paved the way for understanding the hard work involved in the Horticulture industry. No matter the work load, though, the beauty of the final bouquets always make you forget all the effort put into getting to the finished product. After leaving the job at the flower farm, I always knew I wanted to somehow re-create my own version of the magic felt when working with cut flowers.
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When we moved down to Southern Virginia, my career transitioned from an outdoor-natural type environment to more of an indoor-mechanical growing condition. I was able to diversify my Horticultural career into greenhouse growing, which took some adjusting to the growing style, but became equally as satisfying when achieving the end product. My five years working at White's Nursery gave me real-world application for many of the concepts touched on in college, and I am grateful for the opportunity I had to learn and grow my career in Horticulture. I was able to walk away with a significant proficiency in plant propagation, and a more clear understanding of specific plant care and pest maintenance in a greenhouse setting.
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Between 2016 and 2020, the Horticulture career was put on hold while we lived in DC and built our family. It wasn't until our move to South Carolina that the dream of owning a cut-flower farm was able to look like a reality. It has taken three years to understand our growing conditions and how to best develop our space for growing flowers, and we have now reached a point where we are ready to take our operation to the next step.
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We are currently growing an assortment of annuals and perennial cut flowers within the boundaries of our third acre lot. We aspire to someday outgrow our current operation and expand into a larger floral venue where it will be easier to entertain and accommodate families and events. For now, we are keeping things small, but tiny can still be mighty.
