Long Island flower farmers serve a premium niche with colorful blooms
Long Island flower farmers serve a premium niche with colorful blooms Flower farms once dotted Long Island like freckles . Local growers produced roses in glass greenhouses and populated acres with mums for cutting, the vase-bound flowers a major commodity in the region. "That's completely vanished," said Krystyna Read, president of the Long Island Flower Growers Association, of the industry fallen victim to high production costs and rapid shipping of cheaper imports, primarily from year-round growers in South America. "Some people are growing some boutique roses, but there's not the mass production like there used to be on Long Island for roses and cut-flower mums." Instead, most large horticulture operations on the Island now produce bedding plants, perennials and shrubs, leaving the cut-flower business to a growing number of small farmers who are passionate about producing specialty blooms...