Growing home, healing flowers

From staff reports

Alissa Thomson’s company IndieGrow Flowers has bloomed like a field of wildflowers this summer, just three years after she and her husband Jackson left the stifling corporate culture of Washington, D.C., and returned to their native northern Michigan with their daughter Arianna. (She and Jackson met at the former Woody’s Bar in Northport, where she worked summers.

Jackson had been sick with Lyme disease and wasn’t responding well to pharmaceutical and chemical treatments. So Alissa started reading and researching on her own, and they abandoned products with names they couldn’t pronounce. “When doctors can’t help your family, you’ve gottafigure things out yourself,” she said.

Meanwhile, Alissa turned gardening from a passion and hobby into a business. After apprenticing with Christina at Field of Flowers North, she branched out on her own, grew her own flowers near Suttons Bay, started working the farmers market circuit last summer, and developed an apothecary line with her friend Jill.

IndieGrow now has 20 clients all over the Leelanau County—both businesses and private homes, where Alissa and her team maintain gardens. “Some are people who’ve had beautiful gardens for 25 years but are unable to take care of them,” she said. One client in downtown Glen Arbor is Carol Worsley at Thyme Inn.

Alissa’s dream is to one day have her own garden which can also serve as a wedding destination or yoga retreat. Catch her at the Glen Arbor Farmers Market on Tuesday mornings, from 9 am-1 pm until Sept. 10.