Garden-Lou Spotlights Elizabeth Fichter of Queen Bee Blooms

“I’ve had amazing jobs in my life. I was the director of City Museum and had the joy of helping revitalize it after a low point in early days. I’ve been the director of Sales and Marketing for ALIVE Magazine, I’ve been the Sales and Marketing Director for St. Louis Fashion Week, but as the saying goes, ‘All roads lead home’.”-Elizabeth Fichter – Queen Bee Blooms -Flower Farmer / Venue Owner – Kuhs Estate and Farm

“Home” for Elizabeth Fichter is a 151-acre farm on the bluffs of the Missouri River, overlooking The Confluence, (where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meet) in an unincorporated section of St. Louis County called Spanish Lake. The historic Kuhs Estate and Farm hosts weddings and private events on the estate side. The farm side is home to animals like chickens, ducks, turkeys, and horses. It’s also now home to Queen Bee Blooms, Elizabeth’s specialty cut flower farm.

*This photo, below, and top photos courtesy of Elizabeth Fichter*

“My great-grandfather bought the property and slowly added to it beginning in 1915, so I’ve really always been here. I grew up here, moved away for school and family, moved back in 2009, and have been working non-stop on making improvements, adding more landscaping and always more trees. As a function of hosting weddings here, I began growing my own floral bit by bit to get to the point that all the material I have is here on the property and that my floral work is sustainable, environmentally friendly, and has almost zero carbon footprint.”

All the flowers are grown from seed. What’s different about Queen Bee Blooms is that Elizabeth grows materials specifically for design. “As an artist, I grow my own special ‘box of crayons’, taking into consideration the seasonality of the blooms, color ranges, shape, form, details, whether or not they make good dried flowers, press easily, hold well in a vase, how durable they are out of water in a bouquet…I think I have maybe the only flower farm in the immediate area that is thinking in the mindset ‘from seed to centerpiece,’ or rather ‘field to vase.’ I’m growing specifically knowing how they integrate and combine to make magic, and there aren’t many other ‘Farmer Florist Designers’.”

As a child, Elizabeth was fascinated with Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and wanted to be an Egyptologist, but always loved growing things. One of her earliest garden-based memories is sitting in the Estate’s Sunken Garden on the edge of the lily ponds while her mother, an artist-photographer, tucked flowers into her hair and the collar before taking a photograph above. Her husband, Nick, recently had the photo printed and framed to hang in the potting shed to remind Elizabeth of her roots on the farm. “I’ve always loved growing things, but I think I really love the stillness of being part of the process of bringing things to life and caring for them and getting lost in the beauty along the way. I feel like I am truly myself. Though I won’t break income records, the sanity and sense of purpose and fulfillment is beyond compare.”

Taking care of the estate and farm is full-time work, but like many who have found their true calling and passion, Elizabeth doesn’t feel it’s a job. She does it all because she loves it. “I am mostly by myself, but I have great friends who love to come and use their superpowers to weed, water, and help with projects.” Not to say there aren’t difficulties, “Too little rain vs. eight inches in one day. Drought and scorching heat, and then a cool front moves in. I spend the entire day outside, and global warming is a thing. You have to live under a rock or in a cave not to notice the evolution of erratic weather and yearly record-setting temperatures. We’re all going to have to adapt everything in our lives to prevent more global warming while also bracing for the consequences that are now inevitable.”

*Next season’s flowers will be ready for all the fall brides.*

Elizabeth uses data from this year’s flowers to make decisions about what to grow next year and how to do it better. She’s always finding ways to get the word out about how important it is to think outside the “business as usual” methods of the floral industry that relies primarily on cut flowers imported from places like South and Central America or California.These cut flowers are flown thousands of miles in refrigerated airplane holds and then transported by truck. Three to five days is the ideal timeframe to get fresh cut flowers from “field to vase,” which increases the industry’s carbon footprint even more. The chemicals and pesticides used to grow “perfect” flowers are another dark facet of the industry that trickles outwards from the flowers to the people who grow and handle them, to the floral designer, and finally, the bride holding the bouquet. It’s scary on many levels when you think about it.

Elizabeth is trying to improve the industry and change the way floral designers and their clients think about fresh-cut flowers. “I would say that I have been very fortunate to have wedding floral clients who love the passion and dedication I bring to growing flowers but who also trust that artistically, with me, it’s not recreating a picture from Pinterest or Instagram. Rather, it’s finding a different combination and expression through flowers that become completely unique to them and their celebration. It’s that trust that has given me the freedom to make truly evocative floral designs with the things I grow, and I can’t help but think that this is a wonderful way to spend my days.”

Quick Facts;

– Do you have any other passions besides gardening?

I am the daughter of an artist photographer, and I love to write. I don’t know that I’m great at either, but both give me great joy.

-Is there any other garden or gardener that inspires you?

I am a Floret Alumni, and I adore all the work Erin Benzakien and the Floret team do to promote sustainable growing and creating new varieties of celosia, dahlias, and zinnias, and education and resources for growers. It is an amazing and constantly growing body of work that I refer to more than I’d like to admit. AND my friend and father-of-the-bride for one of our favorite weddings here: John Hambor. He’s a fellow Dahlia addict, but he’s also a scientist and a genetic sequencer, and we have the most in-depth and fascinating conversations about plant genetics, sequencing certain traits and genetic expression and propagation of dahlias with their eight sets of chromosomes. We’re both plant nerds, and that’s very comforting to me.

-What’s one thing you wished people knew about how hard your job is?

That is equal parts of love in comparison, and that I dream in flowers.

-What’s the BEST part of your job?

Every single second of daylight.

-What is one thing you wish non-plant geek people would understand?

What it does for your soul to be in the moment and unplugged, and able to see so much beauty and wonder in the course of a day.

-Favorite gardening tool?

Farming/ Gardening sleeves! More than anything, putting these on gives me the ability to deal with weeds, tomatoes, zinnias and all matters of itchy plants and bushes, but also keeps the bug bite action to a minimum and also UV protection in the hot sun parts of the day.

– What is your favorite time of day in the garden?

Golden Hour.