Shaded by yellow umbrellas and fringe, the dozens of dahlia bouquets on Chabot Way in Wilton are simply impossible to miss.
Whether they’re making their way downtown or up to Route 101, Kathryn Dunn wants passersby to appreciate the colorful flowers she spends months cultivating.
“The amount of times I touch these things before I get them out here is like 20 times,” said Dunn, who has run the flower stand through the late summer and early fall for three years.
A long line of Wiltonites
Just like her flowers, Dunn was born and raised in Wilton. She can trace her family heritage to the town’s founding.
After a short stint outside of the Granite State for college, Dunn returned to her hometown to run the family business, Souhegan Wood Products, and realized it was the perfect place to raise her family.
As a summer project after returning to Wilton, she worked with her father to resuscitate their flower beds.
“It was a fun project, and that’s really where I got into gardening,” Dunn said.
Twenty years later, Dunn hasn’t slowed down.
“My parents are not big gardeners, but I love it. I love weeding. I love it all,” she said.
Now, all the planting takes place at her farm on Town Farm Road. This year, she planted 300 flowers, including an assortment of light pink and white Cafe Au Lait, which are popular for weddings, and a large rainbow collection of Ball dahlias, popular for their classic spherical shape. Both flowers reach up to six feet tall in her garden.
“I try and grow ones that are good for people’s vases,” Dunn said.
Now, they’re on sale for $20 a bouquet at the flower stand, which runs on an honor system.
“I’ve gotten better,” Dunn said. “Every year has been a learning process, so this year is really, really good.”
‘Brighten up the corner’
Dahlias are Dunn’s refuge. With young kids running around the house, Dunn said she often looks forward to some alone time in her flower beds.
“If I don’t have my kids with me, I’m just quietly pulling leaves, then you can see the results afterward,” she said.
Each year, usually after the first frost, Dunn digs up all the dahlia “tubers”, the bulbous roots that the flowers grow from, and preserves them over the winter. She breaks each one apart to store them, since they multiply each season.
This process might sound simple but requires Dunn to work with the dahlias year-round. After she digs them up, she spends hours splitting the tubers.
“The beautiful thing about it is that every time you dig them up, if you plant one tuber … when you dig it out, you have seven,” she said.
Throughout the winter season, she stores them and once the weather warms a bit, she can take them out of storage, clean them up and tend to them in the greenhouse.
After the threat of frost ends in late May or early June and the ground is ready for planting, Dunn groups her dahlias and replants the tubers in the flower bed. Held up with stakes, she strings them up to hold them in place, then trims and waters them throughout the summer.
By the end of August, the blooms are ready for the flower stand on Chabot Way.
“I come here because there’s a lot of good traffic. People have been loving it, and I love it,” she said.
As her kids grow, Dunn invites them to participate. She said her 6-year-old son’s favorite activity is checking the money box, and each time, she promises him $20, even though he begs for the total amount.
“My son loves to get the key and pull the money out,” Dunn said.
In addition to selling bouquets, Dunn often gives away extra flowers and tubers from her property despite her son’s protest.
“For me, it’s not about earning the money; it’s just so fun to grow flowers,” she said.
Before selling the flowers on Chabot Way, she’d leave them out for free on her dead-end road. She started receiving notes.
Dunn remembers one thank-you note that left a mark. A stranger had thanked her for the flowers he had brought to his sister, who was sick at the time.
When Dunn showed her son, she could tell he recognized the impact a small gift could make.
“I kind of choked up a little bit. I didn’t expect that. Sometimes you just gotta throw a little good out there,” Dunn said. “And this corner needs it. It’s nice to brighten up the corner.”
