After 24 years of teaching high school, Louise Bennett was ready for a change, and she imagined that a small flower business would be the ideal second career.

“I thought growing flowers and selling them on the side of the road would be so romantic,” she recalls. “Of course, it was so much work and then we had to have vegetables to go with the flowers and so it evolved from there. I never dreamed I would have a business of this magnitude.”

Her business, Rosebank Farms on John’s Island, South Carolina, today is a busy, year-round farm market with sales that often reach $3,000 a day in summer and go as high as $12,000 a day around the Fourth of July. Her romantic flower business also flourished and now employs a full-time floral designer to meet the demand for wedding and event flowers.

In the 16 years she has been in business, Louise has changed her crops and marketing in response to opportunities and obstacles. Today her business is thriving, but she faces a new challenge in the coming year – a corporate imitator of her successful family farm market.

Location, location, location
Louise got her start in 1988 while still teaching. Her partner, Sidi Limehouse, grew up on John’s Island, which was once a big tomato growing area. Sidi’s cousins own a produce wholesaling business and Louise began her market gardening career by selling basil and mesclun to them. “They said, ‘If you want to quit teaching, take our farm, we’ll see to it that you don’t starve,’” Louise said. “For two years, I did both (farming and teaching) and I realized I couldn’t do both. So I quit teaching. But it was scary.”

Louise had one big advantage – location. Rosebank Farms, which has appeared under that name on tax maps dating back to 1790, is on the highway that leads to two upscale resorts, Kiawah Island and Seabrook Island. Thousands of vacationers heading for the two resorts must pass by her farm stand every week, and being just two miles away, Rosebank Farms is the nearest food store. Because most of the accommodations at the resorts are cottages and condos where guests can prepare their own meals, the demand for fresh produce is huge.
The first year, Louise did a pick-your-own vegetable business, but she quickly realized that was not the most efficient way to sell produce. So she started developing the farm stand and grew a wide variety of vegetables to supply it. She also sold at the farmers’ markets in Charleston and Mount Pleasant.

“When we started out we did grow virtually everything,” she said, “ but our market has changed what we grow. We gave up plenty – some of everything – when we gave up the farmers’ markets. Now we get a lot of produce from neighbors.”

She still grows many of the specialty items that are popular at her market, such as heirloom tomatoes, basil, asparagus, haricots verts, eggplants and mesclun. Flowers are grown prominently in a field beside the farm store, with zinnias right along the highway to draw attention in summer.
Louise has other fields about a mile away that are not visible from the highway and her home is in yet another nearby location.

The farm stand was a few miles farther inland until 1999, when the land was sold for a church. Louise had the pole building dismantled, moved to the new site, and reassembled. She also relocated a one-room schoolhouse that Sidi has converted to a museum next to the farm stand.

Cut flowers sell well
Since flowers were part of Louise’s original business plan back in the 80s, she has been at the forefront of the locally grown, specialty cut flower business. She sells bouquets at the farm stand, and that’s still the biggest portion of her flower business, but weddings and events have become increasingly important in recent years. She got started when a friend asked her to do a wedding. Her fresh, garden-look designs were an immediate hit and the word spread. This year, she’ll do 60 weddings. On July 10 alone, she had four weddings. Kiawah Island resort has become a wedding destination spot for couples who want to get married on the beach. The wedding planners at the resort know Louise and recommend her to prospective brides. “Most of our weddings are not that big, on average about $1,500. But I have one booked for October where the flower budget is $10,000,” she said.

In response to the demand, Louise offers full-service floral design, which means she often buys from floral wholesalers to supplement her own flowers, when the bride wants varieties she doesn’t grow, or in her off season. She also hired a full-time floral designer. On page 21, Louise explains some of the intricacies of a wedding flower business.

Rosebank Farm’s seaside location is in Zone 8, with an average annual minimum temperature of 10 to 20 degrees. That allows Louise to grow many plants that aren’t hardy farther north, and it gives her a longer growing season. Eucalyptus is hardy, and she has 3 acres of it. Paperwhite narcissus is planted in the field and blooms in November and December. Jerusalem anemones thrive in her sandy loam soil, blooming in March. To keep deer away from her forest-enclosed fields, she sprays Hinder once a week. She does not grow any flowers in hoophouses or greenhouses, though she has a small greenhouse for growing her own transplants.
“Even though we don’t grow field cuts for December, January and February because our winter weather is too capricious, we plant year-round,” she said. Larkspur is direct seeded in November and January with a Precision Garden Seeder. Delphinium plugs are planted in the field in December. Tulips and Dutch iris are planted in December and January, with some iris in February. Bells of Ireland are planted as plugs and direct seeded. ‘Mammoth’ sweet pea is another favorite. Other spring-bloomers include bachelor’s buttons, agrostemma, Ammi majus, snapdragons, daffodils and narcissus.

One of Sidi’s specialties is hydrangeas, which grow in profusion under every clump of trees near the farm stand and around his home. He grows several kinds of hydrangeas, which bloom from mid-May to mid-June. Lilies are another of his specialties. “Grown in 3-gallon pots under shade cloth, they are magnificent,” Louise says. “We have a late spring, early summer crop and another in the fall.”

In early summer, lisianthus grown from plugs are in full bloom by the Fourth of July. Summer mainstays are zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, asters, strawflowers and all of the celosias.

“For added punch in our bouquets and design work, we grow hanging and upright amaranths, atriplex, globe amaranth, scabiosa, coreopsis, caster bean, grasses, sea oats, millet, broom corn, sorghum, red okra and hot peppers,” Louise said. “Succession plantings are made from spring through summer to ensure flowers until frost, which may come November 1, but sometimes not until Thanksgiving.”

Looming challenge
To keep all this activity going, Louise has 12 to 15 people working for her. Seasonal employees are much more numerous, of course. Restocking tomatoes and peaches in the farm stand, for example, requires one full-time person for seven weeks. Six years ago, she made the decision to go year-round, which allows her to keep her best workers employed and she now has two full-time, year-round employees. The farm stand is open seven days a week except for January and February when it’s open every day except Sunday.

Now under construction two miles down the road, at the very entrance to the two resorts, is a new shopping center. The anchor for the shopping center is a Fresh Fields grocery store, which plans to have an outdoor “farm market” during the summer months. And though she’s not terribly worried about it, the well-heeled corporate version of the farm market remains a big unknown as she plans for the future.

“I really don’t want to be any bigger, I just want to be better, and to continue to exist in spite of Fresh Fields,” she said. “I hope we offer enough that is truly local and truly fresh that we can survive.”

Rosebank Farms
4455 Betsy Kerrison Parkway
John’s Island, SC 29455
843-768-0508