The Joy of Flowers

Transplant rebirths an abandoned home and acreage into a flower wonderland

Mary Rossing surrounds herself with beauty on a daily basis.

Before and after work, she’s in the garden of her newly launched Wunderbar Farms. Sunflowers, marigolds, cosmos, asters, phlox and other floral gems abound.

Mary got to this point by hard work. She moved from the Midwest to the upper Wenatchee Valley because, as she said, “I was ready for a big change after turning 50.”

Farming, while a new business venture, is rooted in Mary’s visual art and retail management background, combined with a love of gardening. The first step was location.

In 2015 Mary, along with her partner, Joel, bought an abandoned home and acreage in Cashmere.

For the first two years, they worked on the structures. Mary recalled some of the issues, “There were vines growing in the bathroom, the electrical had to be redone, the exterior paint was the color of peeling flesh, everything needed to be reroofed.”

Then they began to transform the land. Seeing it today, it’s hard to imagine that there used to be, as Mary said, “not a speck of green.”

Now her land bursts with life, flowers, vegetables, a large flock of chickens and newly turned soil for more to come.