Fiedler

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Easter bouquets as she did not have a floral inventory.

“He asked if I could figure it out,” she said.

Fiedler asked existing customers if they had an interest in Easter bouquets and had to cut off orders at 100. Then, she called Daisy A Day Floral & Gift, of St. Joseph, and asked if she could order wholesale through the store. She went on to create 300 bouquets in her heated shop on the farm. Then, with the help of the Hilltop Health Care Center owner and a friend, she hand-delivered each of the 200 bouquets and staffed a day where subscribers could pick up their bouquets from the farm.

“It was one of the first things that had made me smile or hopeful in months,” Fiedler said. “I just thought, ‘OK, I’m going to do this.’ It gave me a project.”

Fiedler prides herself on creating asymmetrical styles of bouquets with 12 to 15 stems and 10 types of flowers in the same bouquet.

“They’re more whimsical and wildflower looking,” she said.

Fiedler grows 11,000 tulips and has 500 peony bushes. She raises roughly 12,000 zinnias, dahlias, lisianthus, sunflowers, stock, straw flowers and cosmos.

Though Fiedler said she sometimes wonders if people think she is crazy for changing careers and growing flowers since Josh died, she sees potential for the business and has scaled back to one day

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a week working as a nurse practitioner.

“I see it as a way to stay connected to him and have more time with my kids on the weekends,” she said. “It’s more of a passion project.” Fiedler said she is striving to have a deeper connection with her subscription holders.

“They know the work that goes into it, and they appreciate that,” she said. “It’s a different kind of flower than you can typically buy.”

As Fiedler, who is newly engaged to Brent Mergen and is planning an October wedding, looks to the

Want to know more?

Sunny Mary Meadow offers a newsletter regarding events at the farm and opportunities for the public. Visit www.sunnymarymeadow.com to sign up.

Liz Fiedler is launching a “Sunny Mary Meadow” podcast with gardening tips as well as speaking on grief and supporting people who are grieving.

Fiedler has e-books available to help others create beautiful flowers. For more information about the books and to download, visit her website.

future, she is adding more flower events to her schedule. She has hosted create-yourown bouquet events at the nostalgic 1888 farm and at local businesses. She does plan to host pick-your-own bouquet dates in her cut flower gardens, and she offers bouquets for sale on her website. And, though she does not have business hours open to the public at the farm site, it has become popular with photographers who make a

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If there is one thing Fiedler said she has learned from the experience, it is this.

“We can’t control the season or timing of things and just have to adjust and be patient,” she said.

Tips for growing your own

– Liz Fiedler recommends beginners to direct sow seeds into a sunny spot in the garden after the last frost. Her top recommendations for seeds include sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, amaranth, cress and basil.

– These flowers prefer full sunlight, a minimum of eight hours a day. Plant the sunflowers in the far north of the garden so they do not cast shade on other surrounding flowers.

– Cut flower gardens are not pretty, so Fiedler recommends gardeners who want flowers in the garden throughout the season to plant twice as many seeds so they can leave some stems behind and harvest others. Cosmos and zinnias will produce more blooms the more they are cut. Sunflowers will not rebloom, so Fiedler recommends planting half the seeds up front and then waiting a few weeks to plant another batch to allow for continuous blooms.

– Fiedler recommends new gardeners start with a soil sample for the best results but said as long as a gardener has black dirt and things are already growing there, it is likely flowers will too.

– Add organic matter to the soil each fall.