When locally grown matters

BLOOMING BUSINESS: Anna Jane Kocon, left, owner and founder of the Little State Flower Co., at the Aquidneck Growers' Market at Newport Vineyard & Winery. She sells a variety of cut flowers there on Saturdays. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
BLOOMING BUSINESS: Anna Jane Kocon, left, owner and founder of the Little State Flower Co., at the Aquidneck Growers' Market at Newport Vineyard & Winery. She sells a variety of cut flowers there on Saturdays. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Anna Jane Kocon knows she needs to produce a large number of white flowers throughout the growing season.

Each wedding season the owner of Little State Flower Co. is inundated with requests for her locally grown flowers to supply what she calls the increasingly popular “white wedding” market of Rhode Island.

There’s just one problem.

“It’s very difficult to grow lots of pure, white flowers. … In terms of a color that is hard to produce constantly, white is it,” she said.

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Kocon, 37, has a master’s degree in fine arts and 10 years of flower-farming experience. She explained that many flowers, but white varieties especially, are damaged in transport and most of the time florists can only salvage a few good stems from a bunch.

This was why she decided to devote her business to selling wholesale, locally grown flowers to a variety of Rhode Island companies, from florists to grocery stores, event planners, catering companies and DIY brides looking to save some money.

“[Business] got very busy, very quickly because I discovered … in Rhode Island, there was no one who was just targeting wholesale, cut-flower production,” she said.

In the past year, Kocon has grown her business from six wholesale customers in 2015 to the 45 she now supplies. She says she did so by paying attention to the fluctuation of prices on the international flower market and showing up every week to farmers markets and client meetings with consistent quality and competitive pricing.

The variety, quality and quantity of Kocon’s flowers were quickly noticed by the farming community. In May and June she gave two talks, one to the Floral CoLab and another to the Young Farmer Network, about the driving force behind her business: Decreasing the carbon footprint of decorating an event.

She believes growing local flowers for local events is the most minimal carbon footprint possible.

“On any given weekend during peak season there could be 40 events going on in little Newport and almost all of those flowers are imported from across the world, used for one day and thrown in the trash,” said Kocon of the expendability of wedding flowers.

Kocon explained New England can support the growth of more fragile flowers, such as poppies and anemones, similar to the nation’s warmer regions, but only during certain months.

“The thing I love about Rhode Island, and the reason why I like to grow here, is because you get to have cooler temperatures and sunlight in March … whereas, in other parts of the country, such as Texas, it might get too hot, too fast.”

For her, this season is special because these varieties are only available for a short time. Likening the bloom’s availability to the short strawberry season in New England, Kocon said: “Doesn’t everybody get really pumped up about strawberry season, because you can’t get them the rest of the year? In California, you can get anything you want all the time,” she said. •

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