P I C K A P E TA L
Nightshade Flower Farm BECCA GREANEY’S BLOOMING ON RABBITS STREET Story by Chris Turner-Neal • Photos by Brei Olivier
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t’s hard to do better than “near the corner of Abundance and Rabbits” as the location for a farm. On a third gof an acre in this out-of-the-way corner in New Orleans, farmer Becca Greaney is embarking on her second growing year at Nightshade Flower Farm. There’s no building at the address, just a number painted on a wooden fence in a cheery sky blue. Nightshade sits on a leased T-shaped footprint made of three lots meeting in the center. It’s not the showy landscape of blossoms you might expect: the farm instead offers expectation, as leaves and vines spill over mounds of dirt and early or late blossoms hint at their crops. Greaney and her workforce of apprentices and volunteers time their harvests to give customers blooms that 42
will flourish and endure in their vases. As she showed me around, Greaney code-switched between the Latin and common names of her plants, doubling the poetry: a forget-me-not can also be a Mysosotis, Latin via Greek for mouse-ear. An open structure of clear plastic called a “hoop house” sits near the vertex of the lots, protecting fussy dahlias and other plants that benefit from more cautious care; a few yards away, a smaller greenhouse shades seedlings. Fruit trees dot the perimeter, including the two largest loquat trees I’ve ever seen. Greaney offered me my first of the year. Greaney explained that she plants according to “ultramicroclimates”— rather than fighting the inevitable drainage problems, she plants moisture-lov-
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ing species along miniature swales and makes use of the extra water to nourish sugarcane and irises. Detailed spreadsheets of what she has planted where help to maximize growing windows in spring, early summer, and fall. Summer is dedicated to food and restorative crops, when the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants feed Greaney and her friends—the occasional excess taking the place of her flowers at farmer’s markets. In addition to their use as nourishment, the greens, called cover crops, also replenish certain nutrients in the soil, enriching it for the fall flower season. This summer “food season” allows Greaney to return to her roots as a vegetable farmer. She began interning on farms as a Tulane undergraduate before
embarking on an Americorps stint at Press Street Gardens and a subsequent position at Sprout NOLA, where she still works part time as a greenhouse manager. Nightshade was born as a result of Greaney’s mentor at Sprout, Margee Green, advising that flower farming was a more financially sustainable option (one is tempted to blame the low-veg American diet). One year in, Greaney is still figuring out the intricacies of what flower-shoppers want: “Last year people were buying anemones, but not this year.” She knows what pleases most people: bright, bold colors and a variety of textures. (More people touch the flowers than you’d think.) Greaney sells both to florists and directly to the public at farmers’ mar-
