By Danielle Ray
Landmark correspondent
STERLING — Paulette Heim’s green thumb led her to start Garden Fairy, a landscaping and florals company, three decades ago. The business has blossomed over the years.
The Marlborough native started her business in her hometown and then relocated it to Sterling when she moved here 18 years ago. She and her husband have three grown children, and Heim is a certified horticulturalist in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where she went to school.
She also has accreditation as a master gardener and a tree steward, and in Rosarian turf management.
“If there was a class in it, I took it,” Heim said of her longtime love of flowers and growing things. “My mom called me a ‘master horticulturist’ to her friends, which is a totally made up title, but I loved it because I knew it made her happy that I followed in her dad’s footsteps.”
Her grandfather, Pepe, was also a talented horticulturalist. He was the head gardener at Raceland, the now closed horse-racing track in Framingham that also hosted dog shows, and when Heim and her husband bought his house after he died, she felt as if she “inherited his passion through his garden.”
She loves living in Sterling and her home on North Cove Road, “and was tired of leaving it every day to go work at someone else’s yard.” Like many others, she “looked at life through a new lens after COVID” and decided to expand her business into the cut flowers market, and the results have been positive and well-received.
“I have always grown a lot of flowers, and thought, ‘I wonder if anyone would buy my flowers?’” Heim said. “So, I made up 20 or so bouquets and brought them down to the Sterling Street Market. Everyone was so lovely, and frankly, any day spent talking about flowers is a good day for me. Getting paid was just a bonus.”
This spring she put in a whole new garden specifically for cutting. She grows her flowers without pesticides, biocides, and other chemicals commercial growers and florists use, and offers gorgeous blooms in a variety of beautiful hues and a CSA subscription: $120 for six weeks of bouquets with two pickup locations, her lake home or the Sterling Street Market.
“Local flowers, if grown correctly, have a longer vase life, since they spend far less time in the cold chain to get to your table,” Heim said of the benefits of supporting local farmers and growers. “We (florists in the U.S.) source about 90% of the flowers we get from other countries. That’s just crazy when we grow beautiful flowers right here in Sterling.”
She has done lectures that focus on gardening, ending each one with the words: “Don’t treat your soil like dirt.” And she enjoys “everything about gardening except rabbits and deer.” She shared that during one recent night, “Someone ate a whole row of sunflowers.”
“Listen, farming is tough work, and you have to have thick skin, because at the end of the day you are gonna be dirty, sunburned, tired, itchy from God knows what, and still, I love it,” Heim said. “It’s the only place I lose myself in. You know that feeling, not knowing what time it is, forgetting all about your phone, your problems. It’s just you and the soil and what you can grow from it. It really is a miracle to be able to put a seed in the ground, something so small, and have a tree, a fruit, a flower grow from it.”
She will be at the Sterling Street Market held downtown, weather permitting, on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with her fresh cut flowers, vase toppers, and more “as many Saturdays as life permits.”
“Life gets in the way,” Heim said of not being able to commit to every weekend. “That is why I’m doing a CSA with pickup at two different locations or delivered in Sterling for an additional small fee.”
In the future she plans to offer floral arrangements for special occasions, parties, funerals, altar pieces, etc., and at some point would like to do “you-pick flowers at the farm, but that’s further down the road.” She would also like to give gardening classes.
“I taught landscape architecture and did a lot of lecturing to garden clubs years ago, and would like to do a make-a-bouquet lecture where you could come to the farm, have a glass of wine, go out and pick some flowers, and learn how to make an arrangement. I’m working on it.”
For more information, contact Paulette Heim at 774-633-1147, pauletteheim@comcast.net, or via Facebook.
