When Mimo Davis founded Wild Thang Farms in 1993, she did not know even one other Black farmer. Today, she is something of a flower farming celebrity and diversity advocate: co-founder of Urban Buds: City Grown Flowers in St. Louis, Missouri; chair of the Community Engagement and Outreach Committee for the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers; and an active member of the Black Flower Farmers group, founded by Dee Hall Goodwin (Mermaid City Flowers of Norfolk, Virginia) in 2021.
“Finding the Black Flower Farmers group is a really funny story,” Mimo said in a phone interview. “I don’t know how it happened, but I tripped on them by accident. I clicked on it and was like, what the hell? It said they had been going on for six months! How come no one has invited me! They said ‘oh, you’re Mimo Davis, you’re too busy, we didn’t want to bother you.’ I said, WTF were you thinking! I’ve been out here waiting for y’all for 30 years! This is my lifeline. Now, through the Instagram group, everybody is always talking and helping each other. Where to get plugs, how to grow Dahlias, everything.”
Mimo did not start her life with the goal of becoming a flower farmer. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, her family moved to Stamford, Connecticut when she was a teenager. Mimo began her career in New York City as a social worker, later serving as the program director for Covenant House, a nonprofit, faith-based organization whose goal is to provide safe housing and holistic care to youth experiencing homelessness, and survivors of human trafficking.
“I moved to 20th & Park Avenue!” she says. “Everything you want in a studio, I had it. Eight foot windows, and a loft. I was like that girl.”
But in 1989, destiny called that girl away… in the form of a wedding. Mimo’s mom, Dr. Dolores Penn, fell in love with a man in Missouri. “My mom was also living in New York City,” Mimo says. “He was the head of the music department at a university, so if she wanted to get with him she had to move out there to Jefferson City.”
While the newlyweds honeymooned, Mimo was tasked with a critical assignment. “My mom’s husband had heard her say she liked plants, so as a wedding gift he bought her a house, from a master gardener who traveled the world collecting plants–you know how they do. It had a lean-to greenhouse attached. My mom walked me out there and said, ‘I don’t know what any of this shit is, but don’t let anything die. And she left on her honeymoon.”
During that week of babysitting the greenhouse’s growing occupants, Mimo conceived a wedding gift for her mom. “I broke a leaf off every plant in that greenhouse to ride them around to garden centers, trying to identify them and make a scrapbook. In that week, I fell in love with… I don’t know what you call it. Botany? Horticulture? I called it falling in love with plants.”
After seeing a for-sale ad for a farmhouse with 14 acres (whose monthly mortgage was less than her studio loft in New York City), Mimo quit her job and moved to Ashland, Missouri. “I went from being able to get anything delivered to my door at 3am to a town that only had a flashing four way stop.”
At this time, Mimo didn’t know she could go work on a farm to learn, workshops didn’t exist, and the internet wasn’t really going yet. “My family is really big on education, so I went back to school to retool myself.” While attending Lincoln University for horticulture, a guest lecturer who specialized in native plants made a big impression on her. “He hired me, and I worked for the Missouri Wildflower Nursery all the way through school. He would give me flats of plants and say, ‘go plant this on your farm.’ At the end of the four years, I was making bouquets for friends’ birthdays. He said ‘I taught you everything you need to know. You need to do something with that farm.’ I started Wild Thang Farms in 1993.”
Fast forward to 2026! Urban Buds: City Grown Flowers, located in the heart of St. Louis, is a thriving business cofounded by Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack. For the farm’s fourteenth anniversary, Mimo shared a reflection on their progress in an Instagram post on February 4, 2026.
“I can’t believe it’s been 14 years since we first found this property–condemned and vandalized–and from the very second Miranda Duschack and I stepped on the property, in that moment, I had a vision for exactly what we have here today! We took what was a neighborhood eyesore and turned it into a vibrant, growing community asset. If only my memory could collect the sound of the years worth of oohs and ahhs that have brought us so much joy, knowing that we had accomplished our goals. I can’t say it enough: flowers touch us in bountiful ways from the biggest celebrations to the deepest sorrows.”
When Wild Thang Farms was brand new, Mimo went right into the Columbia, Missouri Farmers Market. “It rained for three Saturdays in a row,” she recalls. “Everyone said go to florists with the unsold flowers, but I was really intimidated. I found the most high-end florist and said if I’m gonna get shot down by somebody, it will be the top of the food chain. I walked into My Secret Garden with my wet flowers, they looked like shit, and I explained to her who I was, and I don’t know what I’m doing! She picked up those flowers and said ‘these are perfect - I have a funeral this afternoon.’ In that moment, I knew my flowers were good enough for dead people. We developed a great relationship. She helped me establish a route, she called up her florist friends and said ‘look at her truck.’ The florists didn’t believe I was really growing this stuff. We had to educate them on what this stuff even was. Now, florists are dying to get local, but back then it’s not the way it was. They didn’t use locally grown plants. You were like some kind of disease. ‘Where did you get these?’”
Faithfully vending at farmers markets was Urban Buds’ mainstay for many years, but COVID changed everything. “We started an online store with contactless pickup on our front porch,” says Mimo. Our farmers market customers went crazy for it. What would usually be a $40 bouquet, they were ordering $160 online. ‘We want some, we want to send some to a friend because she’s depressed.’ They couldn’t travel or go to restaurants, but they had money and were freaked out. Now we have more of a retail business and much less wholesale.”
In addition to wholesale, Urban Buds participates in two weekly farmers markets, provides a CSA, and hosts an online store, plus activities on the farm. “On the third Thursday of each month, we host a happy hour. People buy tickets, bring their own snacks and wine, and they get to make their own bouquets. I give them a little bouquet demo, and it’s a fun social event that builds a flower community.”
Community remains at the forefront of Mimo’s mind. As chair of the Community Engagement and Outreach Committee for the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers (ASCFG), she prioritizes bringing diverse farmers into the ASCFG fold. “Coming out of the gate with the CEO Committee, I am really proud of what we’ve done. Their commitment to uplifting farmers of color, as well as disenfranchised farmers, Amish, Hmong… uplifting all flower farmers and making sure they have a positive experience. At our national conference in Albuquerque, we had 30 farmers of color and farmers from historically excluded communities attend, the greatest historical number for any floral or horticultural group. The opening ceremony included a land acknowledgement and ceremony led by indigenous people of Albuquerque. That was so special; that has never happened before at our conference. The whole thing was phenomenal.”
“I want Black, brown, Hmong, Amish farmers to have a positive experience from day one, and to help other farmers, really talk to them about how to navigate the conference, and how to get the most out of their experience. Just like ASCFG members had been there for me!” says Mimo. “The organization is just now starting to get Black farmers to plug in. The ASCFG board gets it. They are a community of positive thinkers, and people who move the needle.”
“If everybody is all the same, it becomes insular. You lack perspectives and creativity; each of us brings our own unique things, ways, and culture, and it's blended into who we are as farmers. The organization can only be as great as its diversity.”
Our Farmer Bailey crew has been deeply influenced by Mimo Davis. Bailey first met Mimo at an ASCFG conference, and she introduced him to Dave Eastburn of Gro ‘n Sell, spurring the creation of Farmer Bailey Inc. We call her ‘fairy godmother’ and will always be grateful for Mimo’s friendship, incredible sense of humor, generosity of spirit, and sharing her decades of flower farming experience.
“Support small farmers of color, for sure,” Mimo says. ““Look for ways to support your community farmers market, and you will find farmers of color and from disenfranchised groups. Diversity takes all of us. We have to seek out the positive.”