“What can I say, I just friggin’ love Dahlias”
My mom bought me a 3 pack of Dahlias 9 years ago when I started a garden at my apartment, and they have been multiplying ever since. Finally, I got a property of my own and that is when the accidental farm project began. What started as a couple of rows of flowers quickly has grown into our entire front lawn. My wife and I have submitted to my flower addiction, and she even had an incredible flower-stand built for the corner of our property. People will come every morning looking for cut flowers, so I make sure that I do everything I can to put flowers out on the stand every single morning, rain or shine!
Since all of this took off I began to attend farmers markets on my Friday nights. Sure enough, I kept coming home from markets with no flowers left, No flowers on the stand, and no flowers left on the plants! Good thing dahlias are quick providers! People began requesting weekly deliveries to their businesses. Real life florists even began sourcing their dahlias from my sweet little micro farm! Since people love the blooms so much, I figured they would love the Dahlia Tuber even more! Boy was I right. We sold every last extra tuber last season by word of mouth, and planted 584 more in the patch!
My only form of marketing is a sign next to the busy road that says “Flowers!” and my personal instagram account where I do a goofy “show” called GardeningLIVE. On GardeningLIVE people get daily updates on the flowers, any wildlife in the yard, fun music, silly voices and flower touching through my stories, which are sometimes 15-20 videos long.
What can I say, I just friggin’ love dahlias. My wife Shannon is completely supportive of me turning our personal sanctuary into a little bit of a flower lovers haven for 3-4 months of the year, and so I’m leaning into it and seeing what will be next for The Dahlia Mandrew. A flower stand is becoming a website. Could a website become a proper flower farm? Time will tell…
I’ve carefully cultivated a collection of my favourite dahlia types over the course of 6 seasons, and have finally grown enough to provide others with the worlds best varieties of Dahlia plants according to the Dahlia Mandrew.
