WOODLAND — If you’ve bought flowers anytime recently, chances are they weren’t grown anywhere near Clark County.
The vast majority of flowers sold in the U.S. today — about 80 percent — come from overseas. It’s a trend that local flower farmer Benno Dobbe hopes to curb little by little, as he presses for more consumers to join the movement to buy local.
Dobbe, who owns Holland America Flower Gardens in Woodland, got a special opportunity to share his message Sunday night, hosting more than 125 people for an opulent farm-to-table-style dinner celebrating local cuisine and local flowers.
“Hopefully we can keep the movement growing,” Dobbe said.
The event, the American Grown Field to Vase Dinner, was staged by a coalition of flower farmers looking to teach the public about why buying local flowers matters. For one night, Holland America’s retail space was transformed into a low-lit dining hall decorated with colorful bursts of bright bouquets.
“It’s an effort where we can uniquely host dinners on American flower farms and connect the dots between that and what is a big passion of people who want to buy locally grown food,” said Kasey Cronquist, the administrator of the Certified American Grown Flowers program. “And it’s our purpose to help ensure that the flowers at the center of the table are as local, sustainable and fresh as the food on their plate.”
Mill Creek Pub owner Russell Brent put together the menu for the night, and Mill Creek’s chef, Michael Borges, did the cooking. Among the local fare, the menu included goat cheese from Cloud Nine Farm in Ridgefield, bread from Bleu Door Bakery and wine from Ridgefield’s Confluence Vineyards.
“It’s just so much fun to see local wineries, local breweries, local distilleries all come together with the local farms,” Brent said. “All of the people that are involved in this are so excited to be part of it.”
American Grown Flowers has hosted 17 Field to Vase dinners across the nation in the past two years. After attending a few, Dobbe, who sits on the coalition’s governing board, recommended bringing the dinner to his farm. Holland America served as a fitting setting to cap off this year’s tour, Cronquist said.
“It’s a great example of a wonderful American story of a flower farmer who started something here and has grown it ever since,” he said. “It seems appropriate that a person like Benno, who immigrated from Holland, found this piece of property and decided to start his tulip farm here.”
Dobbe said he was honored to host what happened to be the tour’s first stop in Washington. He took the chance to praise his family and employees for their hard work and to tell the story of his farm’s growth from humble beginnings.
“We came to this country not knowing what we could expect,” Dobbe said. “We wanted to make a difference in the flower industry, and over the 36 years that we have been in the business we know now that, yes, we did make a difference in the United States.”
Today, Holland America ships flowers to every state across the nation from its two farms in Woodland and California, and Dobbe takes pride in knowing that a large portion of his flowers stay in the United States.
