Jennie catches up with Mimo Davis in St. Louis and chats about reclaiming city lots, bindweed, changes markets and more!

Local farmers and entrepreneurs build their businesses and a strong community through the support of St. Louisans at the Tower Grove Farmers Market.

Davis and Duschack are the proud owners of Urban Buds: City Grown Flowers, a small urban farmstead where they grow high-quality flowers in the Dutchtown neighborhood of St. Louis. The evolution from an abandoned, vandalized, and overgrown lot to a colorful and productive flower farm was challenging, but one Duschack and Davis look back on with pride. This is their story.

Only 14% of farmers are women — and even fewer are Black (a mere 1.4%). Plus, small-scale farms are more likely to fail than restaurants. Despite those challenges, Urban Buds is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

Mimo and Miranda of Urban Buds in St. Louis, MO join Clara Coleman to talk about how they came to be urban flower farmers, preparing ground with compost and tarps, flower successions from greenhouse to high-tunnel to field, their favorite cold grown varieties, their famous "porch petals" program, winter challenges, and more.

From plots of land in the Dutchtown neighborhood of south St. Louis, farmed since the 1870s, partners Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack send forth bunches, bouquets and buckets of flowers that are "locally grown, not flown" to gladden many local hearts.

How an abandoned property grew into a successful flower farm in the middle of the city

Bloomtown presents Urban Buds, City Grown Flowers, Miranda Duschack and Mimo Davis shed light on the joy of organic, sustainable flower farming in an unexpected environment and the draw for their customers to “know their farmer.”

When Mimo (Karen) Davis and Miranda Duschack bought a one-acre urban farm and homestead in 2012, the purchase was a dream come true for the two women who love farming and the earth. In just three years, they transformed a shabby farm that had lain fallow for many years into a productive flower farm, Urban Buds.