Sebastopol flower farmer has a passion for roses

The healing properties of roses have long been recognized. In traditional Chinese medicine, rose tea is believed to regulate qi, or “life energy,” and is used to ease everything from digestive programs to mood swings.

So it wasn’t a big stretch for Jennifer McClendon, owner of JenniFlora, to dial back a few years ago from her successful career in public health to grow roses. And while the spectacular field-grown roses she nurtures throughout her Sebastopol property are not ingested or made into tea or tinctures, they are almost guaranteed to raise spirits.

In just a few years, she reinvented herself as a flower farmer and floral arranger. Her romantic blooms, in old-fashioned muted tones, are reminiscent of a Victorian Valentine. Her little farm is only an acre and a half, but it is packed with rose bushes — in front of her home, to the side and in back, stretching beyond her property line to a half acre she leased from a neighbor. Like many of the pocket farmers cropping up throughout Sonoma County where the cost of land has soared, she maximizes her space and does most of the work herself with the help of husband, Adam Schaible, when he’s not working his demanding day job as superintendent of the Wright Elementary School District in Santa Rosa.

The pair work as a team on do-it-yourself projects. As a pandemic project over the winter, they turned their garage into an Instagram-worthy floral studio with the rustic old finds McClendon has collected for years, saving them for the right project.

“I’m a magpie collector of all this vintage stuff,” she said. The shelves are filled with the tools of her trade, from ceramic pots to old milk glass vases to chicken wire that she balls up and uses to secure flowers in arrangements rather than the common florist foam that often consists of phenol-formaldehyde plastic.

“Floral foam is toxic, and it doesn’t biodegrade,” said the flower farmer, who also collects vintage metal frogs that sit in the bottom of pots or vases to hold arrangements in place.

McClendon, who studied aquatic biology as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, has always been passionate about environmental issues and runs her flower farm as sustainably as possible. While her farming is not certified organic, she does grow organically using natural fertilizers and sprays like fish emulsion and alfalfa.

At the center of her garage turned floral studio, where she puts together arrangements for weddings and special events, is her pride and joy: a 12-foot-long worktable reclaimed from an old redwood water tank. Two old iron chandeliers with a tiny fleur-de-lis pattern hang overhead.

“Before I had only a folding table,” she said, laughing. “And that was it.”

She and Schaible also built a walk-in cooler, enclosing part of a hallway in the old garage and rigging it with a CoolBot, a device that overrides a regular air conditioner to achieve the near-freezing temperatures needed to keep flowers and other perishables fresher longer. (Instructions for making your own walk-in cooler can be found online.)

Picking the best

McClendon has carefully curated her rose garden. It’s tempting to go crazy with a seemingly infinite variety of roses available. There are 300 rose species alone, plus thousands of hybrids developed over hundreds of years, with different roses going in and out of favor like fashion.

McClendon has narrowed her fields to 16 varieties, including old garden roses and some newer David Austin English delights. Each that made the cut was selected for its suitability to her “romantic, garden-inspired” style of arranging.

She said one of the best bits of advice she received while researching flower farming was to grow large quantities of fewer varieties within a narrow palette. That way, if a florist asks for large quantities for a big event, she can meet the demand. She has packed 1,200 rose plants planted 3-4 feet apart on her compact farm in the rural Hessel area south of Sebastopol.

She focuses primarily on roses in classic colors: shades of cream, mauve or muted pinks. One of her favorites is Butterscotch, a climber with caramel-colored blooms and an old-fashioned sepia-toned look.

She also is enthusiastic about Distant Drums, a two-toned shrub rose with colors evocative of a sunset, with a peachy bronze center that fades to light pink around the edges. Like all her roses, it is a great cut flower, blooming wide. And it will produce continuously throughout the summer.

One of her favorites is Souvenir de la Malmaison, an old heritage rose recommended by Gregg Lowery, cofounder of Friends of Vintage Roses, a nonprofit in Sebastopol dedicated to roses.

Flower gardens are making a comeback, with more gardeners returning to the tradition of filling vases with cuttings from a home garden rather than buying big bouquets grown elsewhere and flown to local grocery stores.

McClendon is a fervent believer in buying locally grown, whether it is food or flowers. She is a member of the North Bay Flower Collective, an alliance of flower farmers and floral professionals who champion the “slow-flower” movement, focusing on sustainable growing and community. Different growers in the collective specialize in different kinds of flowers. While some grow roses, McClendon is the only one who specializes in field-grown roses, filling a niche in the local cut-flower market.

“Being part of the collective is great. That way I can reach out to my friends and say ‘OK I’m doing a wedding in peach. What do you have in peach?’” she said.

Buying local not only supports your farming community, but you know what you’re getting and how it was grown, McClendon said. She has launched a CSA, or community-supported agriculture program, where people may subscribe and for a monthly fee, come to the farm and pick up fresh roses and experience the gardens.

Sustainable practices

McClendon initially came to flower farming through her interest in permaculture, a holistic approach to gardening and farming that accounts for natural ecosystems. She applies many of those principles to her flower farming, including the liberal use of mulch and compost to keep soil cool and retain moisture.

“With permaculture practices, there is no bare ground,” she said. “I water deeply about twice a week. It’s about a gallon to 2 gallons per plant a week. ... The good thing about the deep compost — as long as the roots stay cool, the plants will survive.”

She started building up her soil with cardboard and rice straw over the natural sandy soil and adding lots of nutrient-rich compost, at least 15 yards a year. To plant, she adds two good shovelfuls of compost to the planting hole with a bit of alfalfa and bone meal. Every rose is in a little basket to protect the roots from gophers.

After a moribund year due to COVID-19, McClendon is back to planning weddings. She keeps one foot in public health, doing some work for the West County Health Center, helping set up testing locations and volunteering at vaccination clinics. But most of her attention goes to her JenniFlora.

While McClendon does source from fellow farmers in Sonoma County, she works with her own roses by choice.

“That way I can go out and pick the best of the best and what I like the most. That is why I started flower farming,” she said, “to be able to grow what I can’t buy and to be able to grow the best.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.