Meet Sydney Garvey | Flower Farmer & Florist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sydney Garvey and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sydney, we’d love for you to start things off by telling us something about your industry that we and others not in the industry might be unaware of?
85%+ of flowers sold in the USA are imported from other countries and have to be sprayed with carcinogenic chemicals upon entry in customs. That also means that most flowers are shipped from VERY far away and cut WAY before you get them at the supermarket. That’s why it’s so important to me to keep our flowers local, seasonal, and sustainable!

I even thought I was allergic to all flowers before I grew my own because there was this one time I was driving home with my dad when I was little, and I had to hold the bouquet for my mom. By the time we got home, I had completely broken out in hives!! So from then on, I always had a rule of NO FLOWERS, which is really sad and incredibly ironic now that I own a flower farm and local flower shop!

The difference is 100% how the flowers are grown and where they are grown! We source flowers from our own farm first, then other Colorado farms, then farms from other states in the continental US. That’s it. We never source from outside the US, and we only source from other family farms that don’t use carcinogenic pesticides or herbicides. In my now 5 years flower farming, with the exception of marigolds, I haven’t had any issues with any flower that I’ve grown!

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Garvey’s Gardens started out as a small self-run flower farm with a mission to bring locally-grown flowers to our community. It was me outside planting the seedlings while listening to Braves baseball and then me harvesting the flowers as they bloomed and arranging them for farmer’s markets. It was back-breaking work and, honestly, quite lonely as many entrepreneurs find out in the beginning. But it was SO BEAUTIFUL and filled my soul, and I quickly found my community during farmers market season that embraced me and my flowers as well.

I then added in full-service weddings to my services, along with selling bouquets at the local farmers markets, and weddings quickly became my favorite part of my business! I just absolutely love connecting with couples and their visions and dreams for their future and being able to bring my locally-grown flowers to help them celebrate their once-in-a-lifetime event!

In 2022, many of my clients started asking how to get my locally-grown flowers when it wasn’t farmers market season, and that led me to opening my brick-and-mortar flower shop in Downtown Grand Junction in February 2023! We are open daily on the corner of 5th & Rood, and feature 100% American-Grown flowers and practice sustainability at every step along the way, just like I have since I planted my first seedlings in the beginning.

We even detail everything happening with our shop, farm, and weddings, on our podcast, The Garvey’s Gardens podcast, where we drop a new episode every Thursday.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Since we are in the Grand Junction area, here’s my favorite weekend away itinerary for family when they’re visiting from the Front Range:

Friday night – arrive, check-in at The Hotel Melrose in Downtown GJ or Spoke + Vine in Palisade. Have dinner and a nice walk around Downtown GJ – there are SO MANY good spots along and just off of Main Street! We especially love Taco Party, Bin707, Pablo’s Pizza, and Suehiro. Our Flower Shop is just 1/2 a block North of Main on 5th 🙂

Saturday – Grab breakfast at Kulina Lani Sourdough if you’re staying in GJ before setting out to hike the Palisade Rim Trail. Early morning is best to beat the heat! The reward after hiking is biking to wineries around Palisade and eating lunch at Fidel’s. If you’re a late riser, you can ditch the hike and just go straight to renting a bike at Palisade Cycle and bike to Colterris, Sauvage Spectrum, Bookcliff, and Ordinary Fellow. If you’ve planned ahead enough to get a reservation at Peche for dinner – you’ve won the lottery and are in for a really great experience! If you’re a last-minute person, grab dinner at either ‘the still’ (Peach Street Distillers) or ‘the brew’ (Palisade Brewery).

Sunday – Grab coffee at Kiln Coffee Bar before heading to the Colorado National Monument! If you enter through the Grand Junction side, it’ll be a while until you hit the visitor’s center, but there are PLENTY of stops to walk around and see the gorgeous view before you get there. Most overlooks are great for any age, just be sure to watch for uneven paths and know there aren’t many guardrails. Expect the drive through the monument to take a few hours with your stops along the way, and then you’ll end up in Fruita for lunch, where you can stop at Basecamp Provisions or the Hot Tomato before heading out of town and back to the Front Range.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are SO many people who have contributed to my flower farming journey, but we can narrow it down to three groups of people:

1. My family – I started flower farming as a way to cope with the grief of losing our infant daughter shortly after her birth and healing from my emergency c-section to save my life due to HELLP Syndrome. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the love and care of my family members and their unwavering support!

2. My (garden) teachers – While healing, I took online classes from Rochelle Greayer of Pith + Vigor, which then spiraled into classes with Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower and Marie Forleo. All three of whom helped me build the business I have today!

3. My community – I had no idea what to expect when I started offering my flowers for sale, but my community here in the Grand Junction area was hungry for locally-grown flowers and they haven’t stopped supporting me and my mission to bring sustainably-grown local flowers to our community!

Website: www.garveysgardens.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/garveysgardens

Facebook: www.facebook.com/garveysgardens

Other: https://g.co/kgs/wUQGpP2