Local Flowers Make A Comeback

On a former tobacco farm near North Carolina’s bustling Research Triangle, Jonathan Leiss and Megan Cornett Leiss are harvesting small white flowers in preparation for Mother’s Day. The flowers, called Sweet Williams, have been pre-sold to florists in Durham. The couple moves quickly down the row, clipping stems and bunching them together with rubber bands before placing them into plastic buckets of water.

“Now is the busiest time of the year,” said Leiss, who also works fulltime as a firefighter. “We will sell all the flowers we have before Mother’s Day.”

The couple has been growing flowers on Spring Forth Farm since 2014. Until December 2016, they lived in a tiny trailer with their pit bull mix while building their house.

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