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About Mena's Garden

Mena's Garden™ LLC is a new 5-acre flower farm in North Guilford CT that specializes in creating unique seasonal bouquets from field-grown flowers, herbs, vines, and tree branches. Farm owner Dr. Philomena Asante("Mena") is a mom, pediatrician, and flower-enthusiast whose happy place is creating beautiful floral bouquets in her home farm garden.

Black farmers are rare. According to the 2022 US Census of Agriculture only 1.2% of the 3,374,044 US producers with operating farms are Black. Thus, when you buy a bouquet from Mena's Garden, you are buying local and supporting a Black woman owned farm and floriculture small business!

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 Philomena Asante, MD, MPH

A purchase from Mena's Garden also helps Black women doctors (just like Mena!) reach their personal and professional goals: Ten percent of the annual proceeds from Mena's Garden will be donated to the Black Women MD Network (BWMDN), a national non-profit organization that supports Black women who are medical students, residents, fellows and physicians after medical training. The funds will be used to create $500 and $1000 scholarships for BWMDN members who need extra funds due to unexpected personal and professional challenges. Finally, Mena's Garden was in the news!: https://www.zip06.com/living/20240606/transformative-change-one-bouquet-at-a-time/

Dr. Mena's Story

As a child I would wake up to the sound of my mom singing to her flowers in her garden. Her songs would either praise them for blooming or scold them for not blooming fast enough. Later in life when my mom developed Alzheimer’s, I started gardening to stay connected to her.  My home garden was also my refuge when life became difficult. I forgot my troubles as I worked in the garden with my hands to grow & care for beautiful flowers that filled me with joy.

 

Soon I was blessed with so many flowers that I started creating bouquets for others—family, friends, co-workers, even strangers walking by my home—and I was stunned by their reaction. My bouquets brought instant joy—this unexpected gift that made people feel noticed, loved & valued.

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Dr. Mena's 90-year-old Mom (also called Philomena) is a former nurse midwife & army captain.

Mena's Antique Farmhouse in North Guilford

In 2023, I bought an 1840’s antique farmhouse on 5-acres in North Guilford CT, a suburban community with a rich history of farming. Both the house and farm had been abandoned for 8 years and were in desperate need of love and attention. I am slowly renovating the farmhouse and turning the land into a flower farm.

 

Flowers are food for the soul. I believe giving yourself a bouquet of flowers should be a part of regular everyone’s self-care and self-love routine. Why? Because You and I are worth it!  

 

So go ahead and purchase a bouquet of fragrant field fresh flowers that I have lovingly made for you. Flower therapy is exactly what this doctor is  prescribing to nourish your soul!

 

 XOXO,

 

Dr. Mena

All of Mena's Past Gardens

Beacon Hill

Mena's first garden was in Beacon Hill, a neighborhood of Boston where the first Black woman physician in the US, Rebecca Lee Crumpler MD  attended medical school and started a practice for women and children, Here she created a container garden with herbs, vegetables, strawberries and Black-eyed Susan vines that delighted all who passed by! Here's a photo of Mena's container garden

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Jamaica Plain

Next she moved to Jamaica Plain, Boston and joined the Paul Beecher Gore Community Garden where she created a perennial flower garden in her assigned garden plot! A big shout out to community gardens in urban cities and the people who make them so great!
 

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Suburbia

A few years later, Mena bought a two-family home on a 0.25 acre plot. north of  Boston, There she created her dream  cottage garden right in the middle of the city. Many of the plants that you see today in Mena's farm garden came from this home!  Mena just dug up the plants and drove them all the way to Guilford, CT! Here's a picture of Mena's Cottage Garden!

 

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