Trish Daniels is a deep and dynamic woman. She is a gifted writer, poet, fabricator and hard worker of tremendous intellect and ability. Her heart is huge, her hands are capable and with them she created a tremendous legacy at The Allie Sunshine Project Healing Garden. Her love of Allison and her passion for the earth and growing cut flowers became the inspiration for The Allie Sunshine Project Bouquets of Sunshine.
In 2016, Trish began volunteering in the Healing Garden, always bringing her three children along to help. They are all Rays of Sunshine who brought tremendous love and joy with them every time they showed up. During that time, she was visioning a market garden flower business of her own. Being a landless farmer, she inquired if there was room for her to grow with us. She began drawing a plan of that possibility. One day while this was happening, she stopped just down the road on her way to the garden and met local Dahlia grower, Bill Pare. When Bill found out where Trish was headed, he loaded her up with a free truck load of potted Dahlias. These flowers would become the backbone of the Bouquets of Sunshine cut flower horticultural therapy program. This was the all-spark moment for our cut flower market garden exploration, which has become a source of tremendous enjoyment, healing, and income for our community. Trish worked HARD to make this dream come true. She stripped the sod, amended the soil, and worked it up to prepare it for planting. She laid out the garden spacing and planted it. She welded and painted rebar crop supports and engineered a simple and effective system for trellising the delicate stems of these beautiful flowers. She installed the irrigation and taught us how to tend to the plants, harvest the flowers and how to dig and store the tubers.
We love Trisha and are thankful for all the healing that her hard work has afforded our community. With every Bouquet of Sunshine, we are growing for the better. Thank you, Trish for your vision and for being a Ray of Sunshine!