Beezie + Co. Flower Farm Evokes Memories with Heirloom Blooms
Every year Colleen O’Brien-Miller plants sweet peas for her local business, Beezie + Co. Flower Farm. They attract attention and bring joy.
“People say, ‘This reminds me of my grandmother. This is something my mother had. My aunt had this in her yard.’ And that’s why we grow sweet peas,” says Colleen. “They’re kind of time-consuming because you have to tie them up every week. But when we hear those comments from customers, that’s why we do what we do. It just makes us so happy to be able to bring those kinds of flowers to people.”
Evoking memories through flowers is a key part of Colleen’s business—and life.
This comes easily because Colleen and her husband Shaun grow the flowers on a farm her family bought more than a century ago. She calls the 120-acre Fir Island farm “the heart of the family.”
Colleen is the fifth generation on this land behind Snow Goose Produce. Her great-great-grandparents emigrated from Luxembourg. Their children built the houses and barns.
“They were tough people,” says Shaun. “They did it all.”
“That whole pioneer spirit really does get you thinking,” adds Colleen.
After Shaun retired from a 22-year Air Force career, he and Colleen came to Skagit to carry on the family legacy. They are restoring buildings, including the 1905 farmhouse where they live. When they relocated, they intended mainly to caretake the family’s land. But ideas and opportunities mingled and developed into Beezie + Co.
Before moving, Colleen saw a photo of flowers in a galvanized bucket. “I just said, that is so lovely. I want that,” she recalls. “And I want to be able to have that at the farm.”
Colleen and Shaun arrived at the farm in November 2014 and began the slow, deliberate work of rehabilitating the farm buildings. They converted some of the vegetable garden beds to flowers. Before long, Colleen took an intensive flower farming course. The next thing she knew, she started the business. Colleen and Shaun benefit from a wide range of family and friends who help where they can, such as with marketing or deliveries, just like neighbors and families have always done here.
“We’re continuing the tradition of farming, that strong tradition,” says Colleen. “We can do flowers. We love sharing them with the community and that’s what brings us really a lot of joy.” The rest of the land is leased to a local farm.
Beezie + Co. focuses on local, sustainable, seasonal flowers. The flowers are not flown here, but grown here, Colleen emphasizes. They follow organic practices out of care for Mother Nature.
Colleen likes growing heirloom varieties, the old-fashioned flowers she remembers her great aunt—Auntie Toots—growing here: peonies, delphinium, larkspur, dahlias, snapdragons, and others.
You can get flowers grown in South America from the store and they’re lovely, says Colleen, but she wants to bring “something interesting to the table with local blooms that don’t travel well.”
Although they start some seeds in the unheated greenhouse, the flowers are all field-grown. This puts them at the mercy of the weather.
“Last year, it didn’t work out so well for us. We had a lot of hail, which damaged our tulip crop,” says Colleen. This year, the spring flowers came on really fast and early.
In this business, every year is different. Colleen and Shaun are always learning. “You never think you know everything, and you never think you’re done learning,” says Colleen.
The business side Beezie + Co. stands on three legs. The main one is a seasonal flower subscription. Every two weeks during spring, summer, and fall, subscribers get a bouquet of fresh flowers to brighten their homes. (If spring is especially abundant, it might come weekly.) The subscribers are invested in local agriculture and Skagit Valley.
Beezie + Co. also provides flowers for special events, such as weddings. In recent years, they have supported Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland by doing the flowers for the annual Harvest Dinner auction. This fits Colleen and Shaun’s approach. “We do like to support the community. We feel like when we can and have the means to do, we will,” she says. Although Beezie + Co. is just Colleen and Shaun, when a big event like the SPF auction happens, it’s “all hands on deck,” drawing on those many family and friends—the same sort of spirit that supported the ongoing generations of farmers who have made their way here.
Finally, Beezie + Co. has two self-serve flower stands. One is at the end of their driveway (first farm west of Snow Goose Produce on Rawlins Road) that contains fresh flowers grown within sight of the cart. The other is in La Conner on the porch of Enchanted Locks Hair.
“Every year it just gets a little bigger, which is great because I love sharing local flowers,” says Colleen. But scaling up much bigger is not part of their plan. “We’re looking just to maintain and to keep everybody happy.”
Beezie + Co. is one of many small flower farms in Skagit Valley where large-scale tulip enterprises capture widespread attention. But Colleen has found many locals really enjoy specialty tulips—double tulips, fringe tulips, parrot tulips, peony tulips—for a change of pace. Growing these specialty tulips has helped create a niche that “our local customers really love,” says Colleen. “They enjoy getting those specialty items. It harkens back to the heirloom blooms.”
This looking back is a constant refrain at the farm. The business name honors Colleen’s grandmother who went to nursing school in the 1920s. Her classmates called her “Beezie” derived from her last name, Bessner. “She loved the farm,” says Colleen. “She loved flowers, loved planting.” Talking of her family sometimes makes Colleen emotional, her roots and memories run deep.
“It’s just really easy to be here and enjoy being here and just take a moment and breathe,” says Colleen. “We get to do that every day.”
Seeking this kind of life seems appropriate for flower farmers who bring a fragrant and colorful boost to all who encounter the products of their care.
“We want quality blooms and quality of life,” says Colleen. Sharing their flowers helps others’ quality of life improve, too, and she hopes the flowers bring back good memories and create new ones.
Story and photos by Adam Sowards: info@skagitonians.org