Feb 28, 2024: An Open Letter from Coseytown
Dear Dahlia Friends,
As we approach the 2024 Coseytown Tuber Sale I want to thank you for joining us throughout the year! The preparation for this 2024 class of dahlia introductions began many years ago – some of 2024 graduates began their matriculation in our fields as much as seven years ago – talk about super seniors!
During this time thousands of plants were grown, selected, and discarded to curate a dahlia intended for the cut flower market. I began hybridizing dahlias with an intentional plan that sought out genetics that favored field grown environments and met the production demands of cut flower farmers with a goal of transitioning our farm to exclusively growing and selling Coseytown-bred dahlias. This year we have met that goal – and been able to do so in large part thanks to many of you showing up for us each year since 2015 and your enthusiastic acceptance of these special and hardy dahlias.
In 2023, another personal goal was achieved when my husband, Jeff, transitioned from the corporate world to come home to Coseytown Flowers full-time. I was raised in a full-time farming family, and to see the agricultural heritage present on both sides of our families be reborn in our own family’s generation is surreal and humbling. We have been operating at full capacity since Jeff’s arrival preparing for our 2024 sale, making investments in further expansions, refining educational content and planning new topics, and carrying out many other vital business activities.
As I reflect on Coseytown’s beginnings in 2015, we are immensely grateful for this business and the opportunity it has afforded us to create and shape a product that has filled a critical gap in the cut flower market. I have evolved as a hybridizer, and Coseytown Flowers has grown from a small scale cut flower farm into the originator, propagator, marketer, and distributor of our own line of Coseytown dahlias. The market has also changed alongside us. Change begets change, which leads to our present point.
When I started selling dahlia tubers I was met with a strong and loyal following that loved the flower as much as I did! Over the years friendships were forged over growing-related conversations and exchange of varieties. These commonly shared experiences developed a wonderful community which I am proud to be a part of. Our community has expanded because who can keep quiet about dahlias?! The dahlia market has grown tremendously over recent years, creating an imbalance of supply and demand. Whenever these market conditions present themselves, ambitious individuals will emerge to capitalize on opportunity. This is the way growing markets operate. Unfortunately, though, there has emerged a new class of mass propagators who seek to scale up the uncompensated monetization of the unique dahlias Coseytown Flowers has hybridized within the shortest order of their introduction. This is not a sustainable market dynamic.
As a full-time farming family and business, the investments we make into making our creations possible are carried out not simply as a contribution to the cut flower and dahlia communities, but also as our means to fully support our family - as well as enrich the lives and families of our team members who work behind the scenes to help bring you the dahlias you’ve grown to love. Coseytown Flowers does not hold any business agreements with any propagator or distributor and our investments into the cut flower and dahlia enthusiast community are compensated solely through the plants we propagate and sell directly to you. Without your direct support it is not possible to do what we do. Our livelihood is jeopardized when our original product is so swiftly captured, multiplied, and monetized without consent and outside of any sustainable and mutually beneficial business agreements.
This means we adjust and pivot like farming families across American have always done. It is a learned skill that serves us well especially when surrounded by a supportive community. Accordingly, Coseytown Flowers will now operate with restrictions to address the unauthorized propagation and sale of Coseytown dahlia varieties. The text of our Terms of Sale may be found linked below and we encourage everyone who is considering purchasing dahlias from Coseytown Flowers to read these terms as your participation in a Sale constitutes acceptance of terms therein. We have made these terms as straightforward as possible, and for those interested in acquiring Coseytown dahlia cultivars for gardening, landscaping, exhibition, commercial or non-commercial cut flower production, cut flower sales and floral work, and do not intend to sell cuttings or tubers from Coseytown varieties, we think you will find little has changed for you.
As for those whose interest is not in the propagation of Coseytown cultivars but still have intended to sell Coseytown varieties - for instance as a secondary crop income - we understand this news may prompt strong feelings and questions. We are going to be vulnerable and say to those in the messy middle, we can only offer to look to our record of integrity, innovation, and work for the betterment of cut flower farmers while we seek to find a solution that strengthens the innovation a hybridizer provides to the market.
Growing dahlias has always been part of my goals with Coseytown Flowers but it is not the only goal. The larger vision which has long propelled Coseytown Flowers forward is to offer existence proof of a model for profitable, sustainable small family farms that are rewarded for the innovations and products they create to serve the community they operate in. The agricultural model I grew up with had the farmer carry 100% of the cost and own 100% of the risk while only having access to a very small percentage of the reward. We courageously ask our community to help us prove IT IS POSSIBLE to balance the inequitable equation that has held back and snuffed out so many small family farms over the decades through your support of and encouragement for a business creating new and unique value for the community and industry in which it operates. We look forward to continue serving you with many beautiful dahlias over many years to come.
Sincerely,
LeeAnn Huber
Coseytown Flowers