My husband and I began venturing upstate around 2015. We were living in a cramped apartment in Brooklyn and really needed somewhere to walk around. Part of the reason I started working with flowers – before I worked in restaurants – was as an act of defiance against being in the city. We bought our first house on an orchard in Germantown a decade ago, and after a few years – and two children – made our way down the Hudson River to a little village called Rhinebeck.
Blithewood Garden on Bard College Campus in Hudson Valley © Jonah Rosenberg
Rhinebeck was once known as the violet capital; in the early 20th century it supplied 25 per cent of the world’s demand. You have great access to nature but it’s also pretty well connected. (It’s less than two hours into Penn Station, which is only a few blocks from the New York Flower Market – convenient for when I have a job in the city.) For better or worse, you feel all the seasons here. Winter is not my favourite but there are magical things about it including the formations of ice. Spring is the real reward when the first flowers – from hellebores to cherry blossom, magnolia to forsythia – start to bloom.
Dearie smells the flowers at Blithewood Garden © Jonah Rosenberg
