Now based in Gadsden, AL, my love for flowers and gardening took root early growing up in Knoxville, TN. Some of my clearest childhood memories are of working in the garden with family—planting tomatoes, weeding, learning to graft apple trees, catching the wafting fragrance of oriental lilies and watching in wonder as remarkable plants unfolded their beauty. Visits to impressive gardens and local nurseries introduced me to specimens that felt almost magical, like a stately tree fern slowly unfurling new fronds. I was deeply inspired by relatives who channeled their passion for growing into productive farms, showing what vision, patience, and hard work could create from the land.

That foundation stayed with me for years. Then one evening, after piddling outside in my own yard, I mentioned to my wife in a whimsical manner I wished I had become a flower farmer. Her simple, genuine question—“Well, why didn’t you?”—changed everything. For the first time, my mindset shifted from a daydream to an achievable reality because my wife saw strength in me, I had failed to recognize in myself.

Roses captured me immediately. Their timeless elegance, rich fragrance, longevity as cut flowers, and reputation for being challenging to grow well made them irresistible. The difficulty became part of the appeal. After the first season I realized I had a real affinity for them, and I started seeking out rare and hard-to-find cultivars. Today our garden holds hundreds of rose bushes representing over 300 distinct varieties—many of them exceptionally uncommon and unable to be found at any local nurseries. These are not ordinary roses; they are carefully chosen for superior form, color, fragrance, and performance as cut flowers.

What began as a desire to turn “chore time” into something meaningful quickly grew. Instead of maintaining a plain bermuda grass southern lawn, I chose to transform the backyard from a blank canvas of grass into a living, blooming Secret Garden. It has become a place where I feel truly alive and at home, surrounded by beauty that shifts with the seasons. As the garden continues to thrive, even the soil beginning as thick clay unable to percolate after persistent rainfall has become a living soil becoming home to bountiful earthworms as they have a facilitative interaction with the soil of the garden.

We have begun expanding beyond roses, adding more varieties of cut flowers to extend the season and offer greater diversity of color, texture, and fragrance for arrangements and bouquets. A small selection of companion flowers added to the rose garden include: peonies, dahlias, zinnias, baptisia, aster, yarrow, lilies, echinacea, and rudbeckia. My hope is to grow this into a thriving business that supplies exceptional, farm-fresh blooms for homes, events, and celebrations. I look forward to the sharing this work with my daughter, just as gardening was shared with me. She has already shown off her skills in the garden with her skills selecting beautiful flowers to bring inside to mommy after an afternoon tending to the garden with daddy.

At its heart, this farm is about more than growing flowers. It is about sharing the extraordinary beauty and diversity of God’s love and creation with others—inviting people to slow down, appreciate intricate design, find joy in a fresh bloom, and remember they are loved. I’m excited to take it day by day and see where this journey leads. The future is bright, and there is so much more to grow.