About Me

City House Country Mouse focuses on floral and garden design, consultation and installation. How I got here is not an obvious path, but one rooted in collecting. The fascination a collection holds – the sometimes subtle uniqueness of each item, the ability to utilize, or display, or keep secret a group of items that may have obvious or more delicate connections.

I’ve always enjoyed gathering and collecting. My family can attest to hours spent on the beach looking for specific shells to add to my collection. Or sitting at my dad’s blueberry patch until every last ripe blueberry had been picked (after many had been eaten). So it is no surprise that as an adult, as soon as I had a space I wasn’t moving out of anytime soon, I saw it as a place I could collect. A place I could harvest. And that’s what many people see, particularly in vegetable – but also flower – gardens. But to get to the harvest is much work. Sometimes the work is fun…and sometimes it’s weeding. Sometimes you don’t have enough time, or you don’t know what went wrong, or you joyously discover a bug you swear you’ve never seen in your life.

City House Country Mouse began without a business name or plan, in 2012. I wanted to collect ALL the seeds and grow ALL the plants. But I didn’t have room for them all in my modest city backyard. So I started to give them away, and then sell them. I realized it would be great for people to have access to heirloom plants, if they didn’t have the time or resources to grow them themselves. Many of the seeds and plants I sell are heirlooms from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield, Missouri. It’s important to me to help educate people about the importance of including heirloom and native plants in their gardens, and I enjoy providing seeds and plants to community garden initiatives.

In 2014, I started making floral arrangements and wreaths as a supplement to the gardening business, for winter months when garden projects were minimal. It proved to be a really great addition, and I began incorporating more annual flowers into the garden, for cutting. Bringing the outside in for people has become a year-round endeavor, providing floral arrangements to local restaurants on a weekly basis, and providing florals for special events.

I received my Master Gardener certificate from the University of Missouri Extension and Missouri Botanical Garden in 2015, which provided in-depth knowledge of plants I had less experience growing – and also prompted me to get excited about planting ALL the bulbs. So my business is definitely a passion – there is always room to learn with nature. I’ve found that gardeners and farmers inherently enjoy sharing and comparing notes, so I hope you’ll feel welcome here! City House Country Mouse, hoarding seeds since 2012.

Have any questions or want to chat? Contact us.