Throughout the summer, motorists driving along Route 123 wondered why there was a white building under construction in a large, open field in Brunswick, just over the Harpswell line. Could it be an upscale vegetable stand? A small, seasonal house?
Turns out the building with the distinctive copper cupola and hummingbird weather vane is a new flower shop, an addition to family-owned Mare Brook Farm.
The flower shop will open for business on Nov. 29, with husband-and-wife owners Courtney Mongell and Ryan Ravenscroft selling seasonal wreaths, dried flowers, swags, garlands and centerpieces, as well as taking advance orders. Customers will be welcomed during the Thanksgiving weekend and on select dates in December.
But this isn’t just a flower farm.
It’s a vision. A dream. A way of life. It’s a means for the couple to connect family, the community and the environment.
By toiling in their own sustainable fields, “We can have a life and raise (our children) and hang out with them,” says Courtney. “We want to make sure we make the most of our time with them.”
According to Ryan, “The main reason for (the new) building is we wanted to create a space to bring together members of the community, to offer classes and connections. It’s a safe space for the children and it’s climate-controlled.”
The couple eventually will add hands-on classes in the shop “so the community can come and bring friends, and we’ll provide materials,” says Courtney. Plans haven’t been finalized, but classes could include making seasonal wreaths, flower crowns and flower arrangements.
The shop “will be mostly seasonal, although seasonal for us is three-fourths of the year,” says Courtney with a laugh.
Many crops, no pesticides
On a warm autumn day, Ryan and Courtney took turns cradling infant Hazel as they walked around some of the 5 acres of plantings by their nearby home, barn and heated greenhouse. Rows of dahlias looked like puffy clouds with white netting nestled on their buds to protect them from insects and the weather.
The barn originally housed horses owned by Judy Chamberlain and Karen Marlin, who sold the property to Courtney and Ryan before building a new home.
The barn has a walk-in cooler for seasonal flowers, picked at 5 or 6 a.m., before summer’s heat. Fragrant flower and herb bunches hang from rafters upstairs. They’ll be dried for customers to hang in a closet, for sachets, or as “cleansing bundles” that are burned for their smell and as part of an ancient tradition for health and spirituality.
“For the past five years, everything was done (outdoors), in the barn, or in the house,” says Courtney. “All the seed germination was in the house. Dried flowers were on our dining room table.”
Ryan grew up on a farm east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, “with cattle and corn, but all those 100-acre farms have disappeared,” he says. Now he works daily on his own farm, even though it’s painful for him to walk. A hip replacement is on the calendar for December.
He climbed onto a utility vehicle for a tour of 5 acres of open fields hugging Route 123, pointing to rows of mums and organic winter rye, the latter planted as a cover crop. In spring, the earth will be turned over and planted with organic peas, oats and buckwheat, which serve as cover crops and are used in floral arrangements. Tulip bulbs were planted in October, and bulbs and seedlings are overwintering in two greenhouses behind the shop.
Expect to see a palette of bright colors in spring and summer from blooming tulips, mums, narcissus, sweet peas, peonies, snapdragons, sunflowers, zinnias and other flowers. A few herbs will be available, and at some point, “We’ll work our way up with produce from a small family farm,” says Courtney.
The couple proudly notes that no pesticides are used on their 20 acres of gardens. “We’re sensitive to what everyone puts on their bodies and tables,” says Courtney.
An additional 10 acres of forest have been certified organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, and the berries and evergreen branches are used in Mare Brook Farm’s wreaths, garlands and some floral centerpieces. Mongell expects the entire farm to earn organic certification in April 2025.
Back to Brunswick
The flower farm has been a long journey for the couple, who met at Bowdoin College when Courtney was a first-year student and Ryan was a junior playing football.
“We had never been to Maine,” says Courtney, who grew up in Locust Valley, on Long Island in New York. “We said, ‘This feels like home. This is where we want to be.’ It was a magical journey, and Bowdoin invokes a community that spans generations. We both fell in love with it.”
After graduation, they pursued graduate degrees at different universities in Pennsylvania while maintaining a long-distance relationship. They married at the Bowdoin College chapel in 2006. Each started a career in different parts of the country, but they were itching to get back to Brunswick.
“We were working our way back to Maine,” says Ryan, who worked for a Boston bank for 13 years. He told Courtney, “‘Let’s make this jump or we’ll never make it. I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’ll figure it out.’ We knew we wanted to be close to Bowdoin (College).”
They moved to Maine in 2017. Ryan worked remotely for the bank. Courtney was pregnant with son Merritt, now a first grader.
After a year, Ryan took a job with the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, where he got to know local farms and farmers. “There was so much vegetable farming,” he thought. “I said, ‘What about flowers?'”
They initially called themselves “flower enthusiasts.” They learned to make flower beds and enrolled in classes to become master gardeners. “We didn’t want to call ourselves farmers before we knew what we were doing,” says Courtney. In 2018, they started selling the blooms growing around their home.
Then came the pandemic. Farmers were allowed to be out and about, so the couple delivered flowers to first responders and front-line workers at Mid Coast Hospital, with Merritt in tow.
“We were able to show Merritt that we were giving these flowers to people not only to forge a community connection but to show empathy and love,” says Courtney.
The couple then added a successful community-supported agriculture component. In a CSA, customers buy shares in the farm’s harvest ahead of time.
Each CSA share comes with “companion bouquets,” which the farm will donate to a nonprofit, medical professional, first responder, teacher, or local business of the customer’s choice.
Mare Brook Farm also sells blooms for weddings. If no one takes the flowers after the wedding, the couple donates them to assisted-living facilities in Brunswick.
“We thought flowers were important because there always is a story with flowers,” says Courtney. “Flowers remind you of your childhood, of your grandmother. We’d always ask what someone’s favorite flower was. They’d light up. We wanted to sow smiles in the community.” For shop hours, go to marebrookfarm.com.
