Thanh Luu at her farm in
West Kingston. Her first
jobs in Rhode Island were
at a vegetable farm and
an oyster farm.
T
petals farm
h a n h lu u’s jou r n ey t o
flower farming began with a sick aunt. “She
was going through lung cancer,” says Luu.
“She couldn’t eat and she was depressed.”
At the time, Luu was living in Maine and
working as a lab scientist — a job she de-
scribes as intense and incompatible with
her personality. That was about the time
that her housemate started farming flowers.
“I wanted to support her, so I went out to
her farm, saw her operation and said I wanted
to buy some flowers for my aunt. It was
mid-late spring and she had sunflowers, so
I bought two bunches.”
When she presented her aunt with the
flowers, her face lit up and Luu says she had
an epiphany of sorts. “Food can make you
happy and it’s sustaining, but the light in
her face was a different kind of light. Spiri-
64 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l
APRIL 2020
tually, that’s when it clicked for me.”
Shortly thereafter, she moved to Rhode
Island to be with her then-boyfriend and
the two began growing lettuce and a single
bed of zinnias and marigolds. “I did not
know what I was doing,” she says. “I had
thousands and thousands of lettuce heads.”
Ultimately, she dropped the lettuce (and
the boyfriend) but stuck with the flowers.
“Everyone said that after six years, if you’re
still doing it, then you’re golden.” This is her
seventh season.
Petals Farm, Luu’s baby, is nestled on an
eleven-acre field in West Kingston that she
shares with a vegetable farmer. Since those
first years, through lots of practice, patience
and perseverance, she’s cultivated a suc-
cessful operation. She grows about an acre-
and-half of flowers | | CONTINUED ON PAGE 66