Surrounded by tree-lined fields and a split rail fence is a garden patch bursting with a rainbow of flowers. Birds sing, crickets chirp, butterflies flit through the leaves as summer thunderclouds rumble overhead. Kelsey Heller cuts flowers while her husband, Andrew, weeds and their sons Joel, 5, and Owen, 4, run through the blooms.
This slice of land in Kelsey’s parents’ backyard has given the family a place to grow in many ways. Together they’ve explored flower farming and cultivated a family business — Fiat Gardens. But most importantly, it’s been a flourishing oasis during the most difficult time in their lives.
Flowers have always been special to Kelsey. “I don’t think that there’s anything that surpasses the beauty of a fresh flower,” she said. “I would much rather get flowers than anything else.” Growing up, she would watch her mother bring roses from her garden to a statue of the Virgin Mary. The only Valentine’s Day that Andrew didn’t give her flowers was last year, when he gave her a book about growing them instead.
Kelsey and Andrew both grew up in Manassas attending All Saints Catholic Church, where they are still parishioners. After college, they reconnected during Upper Room Theatre Ministry’s production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Two years later, they married. Kelsey works as a nurse and Andrew is a broadcast engineer for Monumental Sports.
Last year, after watching a documentary show about a flower farm, the couple got inspired. “I’ve always liked to think I have a green thumb and Kelsey loves getting fresh flowers. (Watching the show I realized) I could do that,” said Andrew. He worked with Kelsey’s dad to mow and till a paddock behind the barn on their Nokesville property. “I figured I would be doing the work for a cut garden so that she could then cut, but it turned into something that we could do together, (an) activity that’s very fulfilling for both of us,” he said. “I like making her happy and she’s happier when she’s in the garden.”
At the time they began prepping the garden, Kelsey was pregnant with their third son. But in May at 20 weeks gestation, they learned they had lost him. The couple isn’t sure how their son died, but they know he had a narrow umbilical tube. “It wasn’t big enough for him to continue to thrive,” said Kelsey. They hadn’t yet picked a first name, but had planned to make his middle name Lewis after Christian writer C.S. Lewis. So Lewis it was. After Kelsey delivered the baby, they buried him at St. Benedict Monastery in Bristow, which has a section for miscarried and stillborn babies. They laid white roses on his grave.
For weeks while she recovered from the delivery, Kelsey sat in the flower garden in the evenings as Andrew worked the land. When the flowers started to bloom, they laid the first ones on Lewis’ grave. “It turned into a really beautiful thing,” said Kelsey. “We could never have known how healing it would be to fill our empty arms with flowers.”
When the fall came, they chose the flowers they wanted to plant: zinnias, dahlias, sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, tulips, daffodils, marigolds, jewels of opar and more. They named the flower farm Fiat Gardens, a nod to Mary’s assent to the message that she would be the mother of God. “It’s a personal mission to be searching for the Lord’s will always and it seemed like it would be a good fit for what we were doing,” said Kelsey.
In the winter, they began to plant the seeds. “Our house was covered in trays and grow lights and the domes that go over the trays,” said Kelsey. “We probably had 20 or 30 trays,” said Andrew. Gradually, they planted the seedlings. In the spring when the tulips and daffodils bloomed, they began selling their flowers at the Manassas Farmer’s Market.
While sales keep the business going, donating the flowers is more meaningful to the couple. Recently, the Hellers partnered with a group that served them during their time of need — A Mom’s Peace, which helps families navigate perinatal loss. “I wanted to be able to give moms an opportunity to not have to worry about something,” said Kelsey. “I make a big bouquet for mom and I make a small bouquet for the gravesite.” She also attaches instructions for how to send the flowers away to be made into a rosary. “When you lose a baby that young, you don’t have a lot of keepsakes,” she said.
Kelsey believes that the verses of Psalm 126 encompass what she and Andrew went through during this time of loss and growth: “Those who sow in tears will reap with cries of joy. Those who go forth weeping, carrying sacks of seed, will return with cries of joy, carrying their bundled sheaves.”
“We spent a lot of time grieving in the garden and truly sowing tears — that was a really meaningful image,” she said. “And then the abundance of flowers we received was just incredible. I wouldn’t say that we’re quote unquote over it or something like that, because something like that never leaves you. But sometimes you have hard points in life, but you keep going and you keep nurturing, and the Lord can make something beautiful out of that.”
