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Photography by STL From Above
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Photography by STL From Above
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Photography by STL From Above
Karen “Mimo” Davis was a 31-year-old social worker, living in New York City, when her mother and stepfather asked her to look after their greenhouse in Missouri—and the property’s 132 rosebushes—while they honeymooned. “I fell in love with horticulture,” says Davis. Within the year, she left New York and bought a farm in Ashland, Missouri, where she began growing and selling flowers. (In 2008, Davis earned a master’s degree in horticulture.) In 2012, Davis and her then-partner (now wife), Miranda Duschack, got word of a greenhouse for sale in Dutchtown. Feeling adventurous, they bought the greenhouse—designed by Lord & Burnham in the ’50s—with an acre of land, eventually acquiring eight more plots that were once the site of Held’s Florist, a flower farm, dating back to the 1800s. Today, the farmstead is known as Urban Buds: City Grown Flowers, where more than 70 varieties of flowers are grown. “We’re in the heart of the city,” says Davis. “Few people get to connect with farming, and [our shop] gives them the opportunity.”
