LINCOLN SQUARE — A business is taking Chicago’s motto — “city in a garden” — to heart by cultivating flowers in neighbors’ yards, parkways and other spots and selling them.
Maru Braemer’s Monarch Beauty Farm uses residential gardens to grow a variety of flowers, with customers subscribing to Monarch to get fresh, locally sourced blooms in winter, spring and fall bouquets. The business, which started in 2022, now has gardens in Ravenswood, Lincoln Square and North Center.
“The way I describe it is, I do flower farming in sustainable gardens,” Braemer said.
A combination of neighborhood parkways, parking lots with green space, backyards and other locations scattered across the North Side add up to about 800 square feet of flower patches Braemer uses for her business. Over the years, she’s met a number of people who have volunteered space for her business, she said.
“It’s a combination of networking within the community. I’ve been volunteering at events the Ravenswood Neighbors Association organized, especially when it comes to gardening,” she said. “There’s just such an active garden community there.”
Braemer grows a mix of perennial and annual flowers native to Chicago with the goal of supporting the local pollinator ecosystem while providing her customers fresh, seasonal bouquets, wreaths and other arrangements.
Braemer’s flowers are also available à la carte from local, sustainability-focused vendors such as The Eco Flamingo, 4750 N. Rockwell Ave.
“We always incorporate natives into our plantings,” she said. “To not only support the local ecology, but at the same time, it invites beneficial insects that are actually going to be predators to the bad guys we don’t want in the garden.”
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Chicago has seen a trend of gardeners turning away from turf lawns in favor of pollinator-friendly gardens. The Park District also has about 80 natural areas, including at Horner Park, Winnemac Park and River Park.
And the district recently launched an initiative to plant more milkweed — which the butterflies are attracted to for food and as a place to lay eggs — to help the pollinator.
Braemer worked in the flower shipping business before launching Monarch Beauty. Her work history informed her emphasis on growing native plant varieties in her network of neighborhood gardens, she said.
“I wanted flowers for myself. I wanted beauty for myself. And then I wanted long-lasting flowers,” Braemer said. “Along the way, I learned the importance of … building ecosystems.”
Maru Braemer manages one piece of the 800 square foot growing space she has distributed across Chicago’s North Side. Credit: Provided.
Flowers shipped to the United States from countries such as Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador are often grown in a monoculture, in which just one type of flower is grown in a given setting. This can result in increases in disease and pest pressure, Braemer said.
This leads to heavy use of pesticides and other chemicals to protect the flowers as they grow, are shipped and undergo inspection before entering the United States. This can also shorten the time before the flowers wilt.
Braemer urges people to use local flowers when possible to cut down on the economic and environmental costs of shipping flowers here, thousands of miles from where they’re grown.
Braemer said that the idea for her business germinated when the city removed a sickly tree from her parkway a few years ago. What was once a shady location now had full sun, so she started growing flowers from seed in her newly sunny garden.
“That’s how I started learning how to grow my own cutting garden, and then I just started offering flowers to neighbors,” she said. “The feedback I got is that the flowers were lasting longer.”
This inspired Braemer to expand the concept and launch her business, which now includes cultivating tulips during the winter. Meeting neighbors through her gardening hobby — and now business — has also been a bonus for Braemer.
“At the end of last year, we had a few caterpillars that are native to our area in one of the gardens, and it’s cool for the family to see how planting the right things in the garden invites nature to happen,” Braemer said.
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