Taylor Camarena, at left above, picks out roses from Modesto’s Blumen Flower Farm, run by Sandi Dirkse, center, and her daughter, Abi Fair. At left, Fair and Camarena move Camarena’s order of roses from the garden to her vehicle.
She sources as much as possible from local farms and supplements from the San Francisco Flower Mart during her busy season, typically mid-summer to late fall. Rosy relationships “In the Central Valley, we have some incredible farms and farmers, and I think there’s something special about getting to know them and seeing all the labor and time they put into their work,” Camarena said. One of these farms is Modesto’s Blumen Flower Farm, her favorite source for garden roses. “I just can’t say enough about how amazing their product is,” she said, noting the beauty and incredible fragrance of the roses. Abi Fair and her mom, Sandi Dirkse, run the farm, where they raise about a dozen varieties of roses with soft, natural colors. About 90% go to local florists and designers working on weddings. “They could get garden roses shipped in, but they are so delicate they often don’t travel very well,” Fair said. While white roses are always in demand, right now, muted colors are also hot, she said. Two favorites are
the coffee-beige coco loco and the mustard-beige honey Dijon. A budding farm Fair was just a freshman in college when she launched the company in 2016. “When I was growing up, my family had a dairy and a lot of almond orchards and so I’ve always loved agriculture,” she said. Her interest in growing flowers blossomed when she met a flower farmer in Ripon—and ended up interning with her. Armed with what she’d learned, Fair started a tiny seasonal-flower garden at home in Denair. When her family moved to Modesto, it coincided with her hopes to shift to garden roses—but she needed an investor to afford putting in the shrubs. So, she asked her parents if they would be interested in co-owning a rose garden. “At that time also, we had sold our almonds and I had been looking for something to continue in agriculture,” Dirkse said. “So, it was a great time for the two of us to do this together.” With the mother and daughter sharing most of
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