Southport Magazine

If you go to a Southport restaurant and notice a pretty flower on your plate, remember that it’s not just there for looks, so don’t be afraid to eat it.  A very familiar face might have even grown it in her own yard. 

Casey Silar, the owner and operator of Gemini Flora, has been adding color to restaurants, homes and businesses alike with her home-grown flowers for a little more than three years now. Her senior superlative in high school was “most likely to sell flowers.” Today she looks back and laughs at that, because her young 18-year-old self didn’t originally have that goal. 

Casey moved to Southport in 2012 from Asheville, NC to take a job in Environmental Chemistry. In her free time, gardening was a passionate hobby and she always enjoyed growing cut flowers and making bouquets for herself, family, and friends. Casey mentioned the huge change from the soil in Asheville to the sandy soil she now has to work with. “But with a lot of trial and error, I’ve come a long way since then,” she said. Although she still dabbles with work in the environmental field, she wanted to run her own business with something that inspired her while still working in a position that required her to be hands on. 

In October of 2020, she took a risk and decided to turn her gardening hobby into a full-time job. Casey wanted to start out doing container gardens for local businesses to get her foot in the door, and it was the perfect way to showcase her work considering they were displayed out front for all to see. 

“It was manageable for one person,” she said. “It was an interesting concept that I didn’t see in the area, but I saw a ton of potential for it with so many storefront businesses and homes.” 

The great thing about her container gardens is that none are the same. “The fun thing about doing container gardens is each client has different tastes so it’s fun to find and arrange plants that fit their individual personalities, style, and preference,” she said. 

Casey spent the winter of her first year converting her front yard to a cut garden. She couldn’t recall the exact number of different plants she has growing, but her estimate was a little more than 100! I got the pleasure of being able to go and see all the plants and flowers with my own eyes and I can confidently say it’s a gardener’s dream. Since I didn’t get blessed with a green thumb, I had a lot of questions and Casey was sweet enough to give me the inside scoop on how the process works. There was so much to explore, and she practically had to kick me out by the end of our meeting. 

In the spring of her first year running the business, she started offering bouquets and eventually added edible flowers into the mix. “I was constantly researching and soon discovered so much of what I was growing was edible,” she said. “With all the restaurants around here, I saw a market for it, and I decided to start growing more edible flowers than what I already had.” 

The edible flowers have been a newfound favorite of Casey’s. She loves the process of harvesting and packaging the flowers, but she especially loves hand delivering them to the locations and seeing how each chef uses them for their different dishes. 

Southern, A Gathering Place; Café Koa; and The Cheese Shoppe are a few businesses that currently include her edible flowers in their creations. Since I bartend at one of those restaurants, I’m constantly getting asked if the flowers are edible and if someone is being a little shy about eating it, I’ll eat one with them. 

There are times where Casey has to outsource from other places if — for some reason — she can’t grow the product herself, but she makes sure to stick with organic growers. On top of her own cut garden, she also maintains and mows a five-acre field in Wilmington. She has permission to grow for herself on the outer perimeter. This also helps with curb appeal, the local wildlife, pollinators, and with run off to the Cape Fear River. 

Casey is about five volunteer hours shy from completing her Master Gardner Training through the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service, which consists of 75 hours of in-person class work taught by local experts and the completion of 40 hours of volunteer work. This was a fun way for her to meet other people in the area that are as passionate about gardening as she is. She loves focusing her volunteer hours on working with local school programs and students. She enjoys getting the youth excited about gardening and making gardening and food sources more accessible. Casey is preparing for the busy fall and winter season coming up and hopes to help with anyone’s floral needs. 

Remember to eat your flowers. 

Gemini Flora

215-266-6298

Gemini.Flora.Southport@gmail.com