Flower Farming in Los Angeles: Yesterday and Today

I’m enjoying “Sending Flowers to America:  Stories of the Los Angeles Flower Market and the People who Built an American Floral Industry”, by Peggi Ridgway and Jan Works.  It tells the story of flower production in the Los Angeles area and the genesis of what is now the “largest wholesale flower district in the United States”.

Residents of early Los Angeles found the climate of Los Angeles perfect for growing countless crops, including many kinds of flowers.  According to the authors, “By 1890, the housewives of Southern California had firmly established themselves as the growers and sellers of cut flowers…these industrious women transformed their backyards into flower factories, harvesting calla lilies and other blooms for local florists and their homes” (p. 11).

Advances in refrigeration and transportation eventually transformed flower growing from backyard enterprise to big business.  By the second decade of the 20^th Century, Southern California flowers were routinely shipped to other states.  The flower business grew throughout the 1920 and 30s.  Communities around Los Angeles County were known for their flower production, including Montebello, which was known as “the City of Flowers” and the South Bay/Torrance area.  Los Angeles County farmers grew many kinds of flowers, including daisies, chrysanthemums, asters, carnations, callas, and gladiola.  Many new immigrants were involved in flower production, including Greek, Italian and Japanese newcomers to Southern California.

Japanese flower growers were especially influential, and they organized the Southern California Flower Market in 1913, in downtown Los Angeles’s wholesale district, relocating in 1923 to South Wall Street, where it continues to operate today.  In 1924, another group, the American Florists’ Exchange, organized by European immigrants, opened the Los Angeles Flower Market across the street.  Since then, the 700 block of South Wall Street has been the hub of the Los Angeles Flower Trade.  See the Flower District’s website, at http://www.laflowerdistrict.com/index.asp for more information.  The District markets are open to the public during certain hours.

Commercial flower production in Los Angeles County began to fade away in the 1960’s and 1970’s, as most growers moved out to Orange County communities like Buena Park and Garden Grove, as well as to San Diego.  Most flower farms were gone from LA County’s landscape by the 1980’s.  (There is still significant production of some specialty flowers in those counties, especially San Diego, but today much of the market’s flowers are imported).

It’s interesting that flower production in Los Angeles started as a backyard enterprise that allowed women to add to their household income.  Hearkening back to these roots, backyard flower production in Los Angeles has recently received significant media attention.  A local woman, Tara Kolla, was growing sweet peas, poppies, and other flowers to sell at a nearby farmers market.  Her neighborhoods complained, and it turned out Kolla was violating an obscure zoning ordinance, passed in 1946, that allows residential production of vegetables for market, but not fruits, nuts or flowers.  Kolla and other urban agriculture advocates have organized to change the zoning laws in Los Angeles to allow backyard production.  Their proposed “Food and Flowers Freedom Act” is under consideration by the Los Angeles City Council.

For more information about Kolla’s efforts, read this recent Sunset Magazine article: http://freshdirt.sunset.com/2009/10/legalizing-urban-farming-in-la-the-food-flowers-freedom-act.html .

To learn more about the Food and Flowers Freedom Act, see http://urbanfarmingadvocates.org/?p=22 .

Gerbera Daisies

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