Wyatt Waters
"Catching Z’s," 15"x15" watercolor on Arches rough paper
There’s nothing quite like fresh-cut flowers, especially when you can get them “grown, not flown,” as the folks at La Terre Flower Farm in Kiln, Mississippi put it—that is to say, grown locally.
In this year’s “Into the Garden” issue, we spotlight three entrepreneurs meeting their communities’ needs for flora, its beauty as well as its capacity to inspire. We step into Jeannette Bell’s secret rose garden, which has kept New Orleans restaurants flush with flowers for decades now. We wander through the jungle paths of Mark Sanders’ tropical oasis in the Ninth Ward. And we follow the journey of mother-son duo Teri and Connor Wyly, who started their flower farm by watching YouTube videos.
Of course, beauty is just the beginning. At Ernie Foundas’s Tiki Food Lab, starfruit grows in the greenhouse and invasive duckweed is fermented into soy sauce. Pollinators flit and fly between all of these verdant sites, some of them ultimately finding a home in Luke Wagner’s hives, where they’ll make the sweet stuff found in the honey houses across Baton Rouge neighborhoods, sparking joy in the wonder of things naturally-made, lovingly-cultivated.
