City Farm Fresh! Local Cut Flowers

Uplift your spirit! Love your Neighbor! Support Urban Beautification!

Greetings Columbus Gardeners! Four Seasons City Farm is excited to offer beautiful, colorful, locally grown cut flowers. Bouquets range in price from a $7-20 donation. Flowers can be ordered by calling 614.252.2237.


City Farm gets FRESH!


Christopher's new art form


We have a wide variety and amazing color selection


Our flowers are grown at Sunflower Alley, a Garden of Four Seasons City Farm located in the Near East Side on the corner of Bryden and Ohio.


We have over 20 different varieties of flowers

Four Season's City Farm is a non-profit organization dedicated to revolutionary food production and community-building projects in and around the near eastside of Columbus.

Tulips....It's not too late!

It is not too late to tip toe through your own tulips! Don't forget the feeling of seeing tulips poking out of the soil in Spring. Planting bulbs in October and November is also another great activity to bring us all together in our gardens. Many of our local nurseries will donate bulbs to community gardens. Here are some fun photos of people and tulips. It seems that tulips are a popular backdrop for people all over the world.

A Little Color for You!

These images start from this summer until now. This perennial is called Chinese Lanterns. Look for the bright orange seed pod through the veins. SO COOL! Here is a description I found online:

This 1-2 foot perennial produces extremely decorative seed cases that look like glowing orange paper lanterns. Excellent fresh cut and they can also be easily dried and will make choice winter arrangements. Can spread quickly, plant where it can be controlled. Good in large containers. Perennial. Winter hardy to zone 3.

Hippeastrum

When I think of winter, growing Amaryllis bulbs is one of the traditions in our family that I truly look forward to. The bulbs are giant and seem to instantly sprout, giving an impressive bloom. It is also a great activity for kids to teach about bulbs and offers almost immediate gratification. They are lovely as gifts and for me create a sense of tropical in the midst of our Ohio Winters. I LOVE AMARYLLIS BULBS! I found this site that details the bulbs history....

Amaryllis: elegant, sensual, and mysterious. A tender tropical plant, the amaryllis bursts into magisterial flower from an oversized bulb.

The virtues of amaryllis are many. To begin with, it is easy to grow. No coddling the first year is necessary, and it does not demand a faux winter in the refrigerator, as do crocus, hyacinth, and tulip. When you purchase your dynamo bulb, whether from the local garden center or from a mail-order nursery, it contains all the resources, energy, and determination to flower-almost no matter what you do. The bulb farm will have pushed, or "forced," your bulb into a state of readiness. The flower bud already resides inside its round belly. All you have to do is give it light and a little water; it is cued to perform.

No wonder, then, that this illustrious bulb has had a remarkable, if sometimes elusive, history....read more... http://www.gardenguides.com/books/amaryllisexc.asp

Cutting Garden

This is a raised bed cutting garden.

This image brings up two talking points:
First, which flowers are great for a cutting garden? In my garden and this bed, some really nice flowers I have used for cuttings are: cosmos, sedum, eucalyptus, zinnias, black eyed susans, echinacea, gladiolas, sunflowers, and snapdragons. I love using mint (which I always have a ton of), baby's breath, and eucalyptus as filler material in the cuttings. Do you have any good recommendations to add to this list?

Second talking point: What is the best way to maintain the area around the bed? Obviously, this is overgrown grass, so mowing and trimming would do it wonders, but what if you want to avoid grass? Is weed barrier, sand and stone the best way to go? Please share any good tips or ideas.

Spice up your Salad!

Nasturtiums are lovely plants with edible flowers and leaves. They are peppery-spicy, and add a nice taste when mixed into a salad. I have some flowers growing with irrigation and some without, some in full sun and some in shade, and all seem to being doing quite well.

According to wikipedia (buyer beware): "Nasturtiums are also considered widely useful companion plants. They repel a great many cucurbit pests, like squash bugs, cucumber beetles, and several caterpillars. They had a similar range of benefits for brassica plants, especially broccoli and cauliflower. They also attract black fly aphids, and are sometimes planted in the hope of saving crops susceptible to them (as a trap crop). They may also attract beneficial, predatory insects."

I have not had any problems so far with the aforementioned insects, but my uncle has. Perhaps nasturtiums have been helping?