The gift of a garden: How Facebook’s Buy Nothing helped a teacher reinvent herself as an urban flower farmer for free

When Marisa Mender-Franklin walks through any of the nine flower farms she runs in Memphis, Tennessee, her first thoughts are of gratitude.

Partly for the flowers and the bees, but mostly for the support of her neighbors.

That’s because members of her local Facebook Buy Nothing group shared their unused yards and gardens with her, allowing her to achieve her dream of owning a flower shop and working as an urban flower farmer .

“None of this would be possible without an immensely supportive community,” she said.

Her post read, ‘Flowers in need of a garden’ In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mender-Franklin was a teacher planning her wedding.

“I thought it would be fun to grow and design my own wedding flowers,” she said.

So, the lifelong gardener planted “every square inch” of the tiny yard in front of her rental home with seeds and added pots along the walkway and on the porch.

The experience fortified her lifelong dream of working with flowers, she said, “but I didn’t own land or have a path to owning land.” As a member of the Buy Nothing group, she had noticed members offering unwanted furniture, household goods and other items free to people who needed them .

“Somebody once posted looking for a French horn for their kid, and within six hours, they had one,” she said.

“If the group can do that,” she reasoned, “then certainly there’s someone who has a garden they can’t use and would let me grow flowers there.” In her post, she expressed her desire to grow and sell flowers, and promised to be a good tenant and provide the owner with weekly bouquets.

“Within 5 minutes, my phone started pinging like crazy,” she said.

Within a week, she had received 40 offers of free places to grow flowers.

That first year, 2021, Mender-Franklin selected four plots.

Members of the online group began dropping off cardboard and vases on her porch.