These Utah-grown flowers are unusual, last longer and are more sustainably planted. Find them here.

Pleasant Grove • Early Wednesday morning, Stacie Bersie clutched paper-wrapped bouquets of peachy tulips to her chest as she perused buckets of fresh cut, local flowers, searching for the right colors and combinations to create the arrangements she sells at her shop in American Fork.

“Right now,” she said, “we’re just focusing mostly on Mother’s Day.”

That normally means pinks and purples, but she couldn’t help herself when she spotted pale yellow, but mostly green, fritillaria, with its signature, downcast bell-shaped blooms.

“It’s hard to come by” because of its short growing season, she explained, and the flowers add a distinctive, earthy pop to her bouquets.

When Bersie began selling floral arrangements at her shop, Deer Haven, she went with the typical wholesalers that source flowers from South America.

But then she found the Utah Flower Market, a collective of local growers who sell their flowers weekly at this gathering in Pleasant Grove. The locally grown flowers, she said, are far fresher and unique, with more delicate varieties of flowers whose dangly appendages make difficult to ship.

Not your typical “roses and baby’s-breath,” Bersie said. And they last longer too.

“You take them home,” she said, “and there’s ladybugs in them. Like this just came from their farm this morning.”

Those reasons are definitely part of the cooperative’s pitch for people to buy local flowers, said Julie Hall, one of the farmers who founded the market four years ago.

And there are bigger reasons: Flowers available at the cooperative are grown more ethically and sustainably, without pesticides, by farmers who make a living wage and whose products go on to support other local businesses, she said.

Bersie said the farmers often ask their repeat customers what varieties they need for upcoming events or projects, and they will grow those flowers for them.

“I mean, you don’t get that out of your Colombian rose growers,” she said.

Traditionally, local flowers have cost more than imported flowers from wholesalers or the ubiquitous grocery store flower bouquets. But with the insecurity surrounding tariffs on imported goods, they may now also be the more frugal path for florists going forward, Hall said.

This Wednesday morning, fresh cut tulips, narcissuses, delphiniums, ranunculus, and more — prearranged in bouquets, or a la carte to build your own — filled about a dozen tables inside the Grove Station, an airy event space just off the interstate.

Every week from April through October, the cooperative sets up shop there, opening early in the morning to florists and later to the public.

Normally, Hall said, there would be even more flowers to choose from, but this year Mother’s Day falls in the gap between the first batch of spring flowers and the later season blooms. And don’t get her started on Valentine’s Day, in the doldrums of winter.

“Whoever is in charge of flower-related holidays, we need to have a conversation,” Hall joked.

But selling the flowers that are in season are part of what makes buying local special, she said.

A local edge is is partly how Torrie Meidell began selling her flowers from Manti at the market. This is her first season selling her flowers regularly there, but she’s been growing and selling at her Dream Acre Flower Farm for years.

Hall tapped Meidell last Mother’s Day, asking if she had additional flowers she could bring up from Sanpete County to supplement that year’s sparse selection. And she did, since Manti is far enough south that Meidell’s growing season is slightly later than farmers who grow closer to the Wasatch Front.

Meidell said Wednesday that she switched to farming flowers full-time during a calamitous period in her life about two years ago, when her husband unexpectedly lost his job around the same time she gave birth to their daughter six weeks ahead of schedule.

The baby spent six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, and at some point after so many hospital visits, Meidell decided to bring some of her flowers to display at the nurse’s NICU station.

“I brought it in mostly for myself, because I just missed my flowers... but I was shocked at how many people would just go after a really hard day in the NICU...right up to my flowers, close their eyes and just take a big, deep breath.”

Some would shed tears, and later, many told her how much the flowers meant to them — a bright spot at a challenging job, she said. Seeing those reactions, Meidell said she knew it was time to pivot to farming full-time.

Meidell said people often have strong reactions to flowers. Scent is a powerful sense, after all, and local flowers are particularly fragrant.

“I feel like flowers are powerful,” she said, “and there’s something about it that connects people, that conveys love, that conveys beauty. And we need beauty.”

Hall said anywhere from 50 to 100 or so people come through the market every week, clearing most, if not all, the tables within hours — buying some of that beauty to spread around.

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