From hobbyist to full-time flower farmer, Molly Mauzy with Brown Dog Blooms is at home wandering through rows of plants on her Staunton property: Apple of Peru, Bells of Ireland, snapdragons, poppies, dahlias and gladiolas, to name a few of the 50 varieties she grows. Her flowers are towering; sometimes taller than her.
As she wanders, she shares some of the new flowers she selected to grow this year, some she couldn’t remember the names of. She also tries to grow familiar flowers – like zinnias – but finds unique colors and varieties that people haven’t seen before.
“I very much am the person that just picks out things that I like and hope that other people like them, too,” she said.
Mauzy is relatively new to flower gardening. She worked at a hospital during COVID and needed to do something to get her mind off the stress of the job. She began following people on Instagram who were growing flowers in their back yards, and she was inspired to do some gardening of her own.
“I’ve always loved flowers,” she told AFP, sitting in an Adirondack chair around a fire pit in the middle of her gardens on a hot summer day. “My dad is a landscaper, so we grew up with lots of pretty flowers and plants around the house. I never really grew anything until COVID, and I really needed some sort of outlet.”
Her husband, Shawn, helped her build a couple of raised beds, and her journey to become a flower farmer was officially under way, even if she didn’t know it yet.
“I just ordered some seeds, put them in the ground, and they started growing, and then, once they grew, it’s like, wow, this is amazing. I can make my own bouquets. I can do all these fun things.”
While her day job was challenging, she found respite and peace in her gardens and spent her free time checking on her flowers and helping them thrive.
“So that kind of planted the seed, so to speak, and then it just kind of grew from there.”
Mauzy has given up full-time work outside her Staunton farm, but she still works two days a week as a nurse at an outpatient facility in Charlottesville, approximately 20 hours.
Like flower gardening, house hunting took time, patience
Soon after her flower gardening journey began, the Mauzys began a house-hunting journey; they lived in a neighborhood and wanted more land, with woods and meadows, and not surprisingly, space for growing more flowers.
“It had to be the right land for growing,” Mauzy said. “My husband also wanted woods and some meadows. It was also really important to me to have a historic home.”
It took them two-and-a-half years before they found the perfect 13-acre property that would become the home of Brown Dog Blooms at 324 Middlebrook Road in Staunton.
“Coming here is what really allowed me to finally get started,” she said.
Shortly after settling into her new home, Mauzy started her flower farming on about an eighth of an acre and opened her business officially in the spring of 2023.
The inspiration for the name of her farm came from her seven-and-a-half-year-old chocolate Lab, Cocoa.
“She’s our namesake,” Mauzy said. “She comes out and works with me, which is mostly sunbathing.”
With 13 acres of property, she had to learn to adapt to the wildlife around her. She added electric fences to keep the deer out her gardens and solar stakes intended to repel voles.
She had a lot of trial and error along the way, but for the most part, she said, things have gone well.
She said that her customers usually assume that she doesn’t make mistakes. and they are wrong.
“My customers will tell me that they kill plants, and I’m like, I kill a lot of plants, like you might not think so, but I really kill a lot of plants.”
She does a ton of research and hopes for the best; making minor adjustments here and there.
“Everything’s a learning experience, and that’s what I really, really like about this, is I’m always experimenting. I try not to take it too seriously, and I try to grow an overabundance of things too, because I know things are gonna die.”
The great unknowns: Spotted lanternflies and weather
As an organic farmer who doesn’t use herbicides or pesticides, she deals with bugs and overplants to compensate, knowing she can’t sell stems with bug bites. She’s added predator bugs to her gardens to try to keep the bad bugs at bay.
She’s also facing a new challenge this year – spotted lanternflies – with nymphs already on her flowers. Last year, she only saw one.
While they have invasive plants on the property, they don’t have any Trees of Heaven, a known host plant for the spotted lanternfly, so she thought they might not an abundance of them.
“I’m starting to see lots of spotted lanternfly nymphs, so I’m kind of afraid what that’s going to look like this year. I’ve seen so many of the nymphs, and they’re so fast. They’re so hard to kill.”
The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services lifted the quarantine on lanternflies this spring acknowledging the infestation in the state has been so aggressive, that the quarantine is no longer effective. The quarantine repeal removes all regulatory requirements restricting intrastate movement, essentially conceding that the lanternfly is now part of life in Virginia, whether we like it or not.
Outside of dealing with invasive bugs, the life of a flower involves a lot of heavy lifting, covering and uncovering plants, and watching the weather to prepare for snow or ice, or weather that is too hot or too cold, depending on the season.
Mauzy told AFP that 70 percent of her plants are added to her gardens in the fall; a process called overwintering. She starts her seeds in September, and then plants them in early October. She said she has to water the plants some in November, but for the most part, ice and snow keep the seedlings hydrated. A late frost can ruin tulips or other spring plants.
“Weather is a huge challenge. When it’s getting to zero degrees, I’m trying not to freak out. I’m doing whatever I can do.”
She plants another round of cold-hardy annuals in March to have a staggered bloom time, and then after the last frost, she puts her summer flowers in the ground.
In the past, she’s started her summer plants inside in her basement with grow racks, but she has outgrown the space. She’s now partnered with a local greenhouse where she provides all the seeds, and they get them started for her.
“You only have so many hours,” she said. “What I’ve learned is, even though I want to do it all by myself, I can’t.”
A one-woman show, with some help from family and friends
While Mauzy takes on the majority of the work, a one-woman show, she jokes, her family and friends do pitch in to help.
Her dad is building her a flower cooler in her garage that will extend the shelf life of her cut flowers. Her husband helps her with manual labor like putting down t-stakes or getting new areas prepped for planting. Her mom and a friend come over to help her weed.
She recently added an extension to her flower beds – adding 320 peony plants in the fall. She’s also moved her summer plants to the new area.
The expansion has, admittedly, made it hard for her to balance everything.
“This is full time and more. I feel like I have a constant to-do list,” she said.
She has plants that the greenhouse delivered that need to go in the ground; and her own vegetable garden is empty, except for some asparagus. She said she hoped to get to both over the weekend.
For now, Mauzy said she’s content with things just the way they are.
“I’m kind of at my limit of what’s manageable to me. The only expansion that I really see is adding more peonies, so we can have a larger peony field.”
Despite the long hours and frustrations with weather and bugs, she stills feels the same excitement she did when she was first planting in her back yard during COVID.
“I know bouquets have short lives, and that’s some people’s beef with them, but I just think they’re so magical,” Mauzy said. “There’s been a ton of scientific research about the positive effects that having fresh flowers in your house can have on you.”
About Brown Dog Blooms Flower Farm
- Farm located at 324 Middlebrook Road in Staunton
- Farm stand open for purchases on farm Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Flower bouquets available at Crucible Coffee in Staunton and Happ Coffee in Waynesboro, while supplies last
- Follow Brown Dog Blooms on Facebook for surprise Wednesday hours and other announcements
- Follow the farm on Instagram
- Sign up to receive a newsletter detailing happenings on the farm
- Offers bouquet bar parties, wedding floral design and subscription bouquets
Mauzy: Tips for home gardeners
- Add compost for nourishment. She gets hers from Black Bear Composting in Crimora
- Cut plants to the ground at the end of the season and allow the roots to decay to add more organic matter to the ground
- Add the compost before you plant
- Recommends Neptune’s Harvest seaweed and fish emulsion for outdoor plants and seaweed only version on indoor plants (the fish is stinky for indoors)
- Don’t till unless you have to; research shows you disrupt the good microorganisms in the ground with tilling
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Crystal Graham
