Elizabeth Fichter has a keen eye for seeing the unique beauty in each flower and tree on her Spanish Lake flower farm.
For nearly two decades, Fichter — mostly known by her childhood nickname Luli — has been the “Queen Bee” of Queen Bee Blooms flower farm. The scent of fresh flowers lingers throughout the 164-acre floral paradise that’s been in her family since 1915.
Her farm has a little bit of everything: lilac, candy corn, bleeding hearts, magnolia, pink dogwood and a curly willow tree. The former beekeeper has even been able to entice some friendly bees to help with the pollination of her flowers.
Luli’s farm is a love letter to her mission: get more people to “fall in love” with flowers native to and seasonally available in the U.S. And locally grown flowers are becoming even more important as the international flower market is threatened by President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“Everything you get from me has been grown here,” Luli said. “I know it, and I can speak to [it] that it’s going to be resilient and strong.”
She’s even developed more than 100 different seed varieties. Luli became a flower farmer in 2010 and has a background in floral and wedding design. After years of relying on internationally sourced cut flowers, she weaned herself completely in 2019, when she learned more about the dark side of floral imports.
She said growers in flower-producing countries face physical and financial exploitation. Then there’s the carbon footprint left behind transporting the flowers stateside. When the flowers get here, they come with a warning: Wear gloves and a mask when handling. She said that’s because they’re coated in pesticides and chemicals.
“If we’re at risk for the level of pesticides or the chemicals or preservatives in these flowers, what must it be like for the people who are working with them day in and day out?” Luli said.
After all that time on a boat, plane and truck, the quality of the flowers diminished; oftentimes the blooms become moldy, wilted, crunchy and rotten. Little by little, Luli built up a collection of shrubs, bushes and seeds to plant and grow. She said the difference was night and day.
“The flowers [that] are coming from [here], they’re going to be much better acclimated to the conditions on any given wedding day versus a ranunculus or a tulip coming from the Netherlands being brought out into Midwestern heat,” Luli said. “Once you start seeing all the negatives behind international flowers, it made it much more compelling to find a way to replace them.”
Local florists might have to pivot to more homegrown alternatives in the future as the floral industry navigates yet another thorny situation — tariffs. The Trump administration’s never-ending tariff war has put the industry in an economic bind. And other federal cuts are threatening other parts of the industry that could otherwise see opportunities from tariffs.
Shaky ground
Roughly 80% of cut flowers, including fan favorites like roses and tulips, making their way into floral shops throughout the U.S. are imported from countries such as Ecuador, the Netherlands and Colombia.
While higher tariffs may create an opportunity for domestic growers, meeting that demand for local florists and wholesalers will be a challenge for farmers like Luli without federal support — also on the Trump administration's cutting block.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Luli said. “You can’t try to drive business back to this country while not helping us be ready for it.”
In February, her farm was approved for a grant through a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that would have allowed her to extend her growing season and install a well and fencing. But that dream was short-lived when the federal government announced it had frozen and cut essential funding.
“I had a couple of hours of just elation, and then the next morning the news was that all of the funding was being clawed back,” Luli said.
Wholesalers have already told florists they might need to eat the extra cost or pass it on to their customers. Ammari Bourgeois, the owner and creative director of Noon Moon Bloom Co. in Edwardsville, wants to avoid that for as long as possible.
“One way that I’m doing that is trying to utilize local growers,” Bourgeois said. “We have several in the St. Louis area, thankfully, who grow really unique things.”
Bourgeois already utilizes Urban Buds, an urban flower farm in St. Louis, to get some of her flowers. For Noon Moon Bloom Co., a small, Black-owned business, the tariffs will be a hard pill to swallow, Bourgeois said. A good chunk of her floral arrangements revolve around anthurium, an imported tropical flower.
“We already have contracts and things planned out for our future,” Bourgeois said. “Initially, it was a little bit of worry. Like, ‘What am I going to do in this situation? How is that going to affect us?’”
Bourgeois also sources some of her flowers, like anthurium, from Baisch and Skinner, a wholesale distributor in St. Louis. Her sales representative, Michael Mercer, said his clients have seen the cost of hyacinths and tulips from Holland skyrocket in recent weeks. He’s trying to ease their concerns as uncertainty over the tariffs looms.
“It’s a crazy industry right now, and I want to make sure that everyone has the ability to get their things done with the same prices that they’re used to, but also letting them know along the way that they will fluctuate,” Mercer said.
Leveling the playing field
Mimo Davis has been a flower farmer for 30 years. Urban Buds City Grown Flowers, the farm Davis co-owns, is nestled in the heart of a south St. Louis neighborhood.
Every day she spends countless hours outside tending to and harvesting some of the mainstays of her farm: ranunculus and tulips. It’s a labor of love, but she takes pride in handing off a fresh bouquet to her patrons and seeing their reaction at the Tower Grove Farmers Market.
“That is the world to me,” Davis said. “Flowers know no race. They can cross any border, any group of people. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t like flowers. Flowers are with us from birth to death.”
The former vice president and current board member of the Association of Speciality Cut Flower Growers said the news of the tariffs and their added uncertainty left her frustrated.
Unlike Luli, Davis’ farm relies on imports including bulbs, corms and tubers. She said she’s not aware of any corm or tulip bulb producers in the U.S. Typically, her farm plants 15,000 tulips. But with the tariffs in place in addition to shipping costs, her tulip offerings might be in jeopardy.
“It’s kind of a wait and see kind of moment, which is maddening for the flower farmer because everything we do is a year in advance,” said Davis. “Now is my time to place my order for next season, but I have no idea what the market is going to do.”
The tariffs have heightened a decades-long problem in the industry that started in the 1990s. The U.S. enacted the Andean Free Trade Agreement in response to its war on drugs. It gave countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru economic incentive to stop what the U.S. classified as illegal drug production. In exchange, tariffs were eliminated from several products, including cut flowers.
“All across the United States it closed down all of these mom and pop glass greenhouses,” said Davis. The site of her farm was one of those greenhouses that was affected. “All of a sudden Ecuador was shipping roses, chrysanthemums, all kinds of crops flooding the market at a very cheap price. So now it might level the playing field a little bit more for local growers.”
Davis has already taken steps to stay afloat. She’s being conservative with all of her supplies, and reusing what she can. She said there’s no telling how much everything will cost in the coming months. Davis has weathered many storms in the floral industry including the coronavirus pandemic, but the thought of what the tariffs will mean for her and her team long term weighs on her.
“It would mean cutting back,” Davis said. “Becoming smaller. I’m already a small farm. How small can I be?”
‘Buy local’
Davis hasn’t given up. She said the best thing people can do ahead of special events and major holidays like weddings and Mother’s Day is to support their local growers.
“Buy local,” Davis said. “Just start now. Start supporting us now so that when all of this does hit the fan, we’re in a better position. If you’re still buying those imported flowers from Trader Joe’s or Costco, you’re not helping your community. You’re participating in the problem.”
Back on Luli’s farm, her mission is starting to pay off.
Her latest client, Beth Cisco, found Luli through her local florist in Indiana. Cisco was asked by her stepdaughter, local bride Gabby McPheeters, to handle the flowers for her big day. Cisco is known in her family for her ethically sourced and beautiful floral arrangements around her home. She said it was important for her to support a local grower for her stepdaughter’s wedding day.
“I’ve always worked with local florists, specifically florists that source their flowers from local producers,” Cisco said. “I’ve always been intentional about that, intentional in finding someone that is of that same process and culture and really philosophy. Finding Queen Bee in Elizabeth was exactly what we were looking for and exactly what we wanted.”
Cisco and Luli connected immediately. She said Luli understood her vision and called the experience “magical.” Cisco recalled how bright McPheeters' eyes lit up when they visited Queen Bee Blooms farm for the first time. McPheeters — whom she affectionately calls her “Gabby Girl” — whispered in her ear, "Beth, this is amazing!"
“Being able to hand-select — literally hand-select — the flowers, the color of the flower, cut from the tree, cut from the ground was something,” Cisco said. “It became an experience in and of itself.”
That’s the experience that Luli wants consumers and florists to have, whether they choose her farm or another local grower. She said the ability to build relationships and support local farmers, as well as “falling in love” with the flowers available in the U.S., will benefit everyone as they navigate through the waves of the tariffs.
