Joan Ewer Thorndike took to farming flowers at Le Mera Gardens in 1992, when her daughters Camila and Isabella were tiny little girls aged 5 and 3. Joan was born and raised in Santiago, Chile in a family and a culture where flowers were ubiquitous, everyday companions. After she married her husband Dan and moved to Southern Oregon she was surprised to find there was no flower culture in the Valley despite its generous growing season and agricultural landscape. Flowers in the 90s were reserved for special occasions, they were primarily sold around Hallmark holidays, they were treated as a luxury, and underappreciated or misunderstood for their impermanence.

Joan set about to change that culture, to make fresh flowers widely accessible, a necessity not a luxury, a source of simple joy. A couple of decades later, to farm locally has become a movement and Oregon grew a big and appreciative love for seasonal fresh flowers farmed close to home.

Through the nineties Joan farmed Le Mera Gardens on an acre and a bit at the outskirts of Ashland, raising her children among flowers, bees, bugs and dirt in all weather conditions. In early 2000 she was invited by Suzi and Steve Fry to join forces with their remarkably diversified Fry Family Farm, a marriage and partnership which has allowed her to vastly expand the diversity, quantity and quality of flowers and foliage for her clients in southern Oregon and northern California.

These days Le Mera Gardens’ seasonal fresh flowers, foliage, branches, berries and ornamental herbs are sold to local florists, designers, do-it-yourself weddings of every stripe, local businesses, homes and charities in southern Oregon and northern California, from mid March through late October.

Ours is a mighty flower team at Le Mera Gardens. The team includes our two lead pickers, sisters Cheli and Laura, whose uncanny eye and inexhaustible strength and kindness truly make Le Mera Gardens possible. They have help with the harvest from Irma their diminutive mother whose feet dance irrepressibly, and Brenda our most recent addition. Joan’s right hand Tori (Victoria) was born to outspoken Italians in New Jersey and is a recent transplant from Nantucket, MA. Tori had deep experience in farming vegetables and none whatsoever in growing flowers - which just isn’t a problem with her! Tori’s fearless enthusiasm for everything new and steady pace make her an invaluable addition to this eccentric clan and to the business of farming specialty cut flowers.

Of course it takes the large crew of field workers from the Fry Family Farm to get millions of seeds germinated in the spring, transplanted into the fields or into protected houses, tended to during the flowering season, and kept semi-tamed till frost takes over in late autumn.

Joan was educated in the business of flower farming by the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers, by mentors near and far, by her florist clients who demand a premium flower, and by simply doing the work of farming.

Le Mera Gardens is an early proponent of growing for your local market and an advocate of the Buy Local movement, premium member of Slow Flowers USA and a featured farm in The 50 Mile Bouquet by Debra Prinzing.