When Carrie Khoury and her husband moved into their home in Lombard (DuPage County), she wasn’t interested in the non-native, non-edible landscaping the home came with. So she ripped out the plants and sold them on Facebook Marketplace, a glimpse of all the plant sales and lawn transformations to come.

Carrie made her gardening hobby an official business in 2020 when she started Green Garden Mama, a small-scale flower farm, garden consulting service, and micro-nursery.

“Before I started Green Garden Mama, I ran another small business designing and making wedding invitations,” said Carrie. “I loved designing pretty things and being a part of the biggest day of someone’s life, but really struggled with the amount of waste my product was creating. I wanted to make pretty things in a more eco-friendly way. When I learned that 80% of cut flowers sold in the US are imported and that there is a huge collection of small growers working to change that, I knew that this was a movement I wanted to be a part of.” 

Green Garden Mama’s infrastructure is made up of borrowed backyards and a walk-in cooler in her basement for the cut flowers. While she is making it work with this fractured infrastructure, having to shift between places is difficult. With her farm, storage, and packing operations spread out across multiple spaces, an average day includes transporting tools, managing part-time employees on multiple sites, and running up and down basement stairs with seedlings and buckets of tulips.

As demand increases and her business grows, she’s expanded production into nearby family members’ and friend’s backyards, with one-quarter of an acre now in production. For the 2025 season, Carrie is looking to scale up to a more permanent location with .75-5 acres.

Carrie has an enthusiastic, go-getter personality. As soon as she had secured more space for 2024, she was already making calls for the 2025 season. But land access in Lombard is challenging. Given the growing population of this Chicago suburb, most of the land is zoned residential, commercial, or industrial. There are a few remaining corn fields, but according to Carrie’s research, those are owned by the DuPage County Airport and DuPage Forest Preserve.

 

Despite the limited options, Carrie is unwilling to move to where farmland is more abundant. Her roots are in Lombard with three kids in school, her husband working nearby, and grandparents living just two blocks away. She wants to stay rooted where she and her family have made a home and community.

 

 The ideal property Carrie is looking for would include:

  • 20-minute drive, or less, from her home in Lombard
  • .75-5 acres
  • Access to water
  • Access to storage or ability to put up a shed, share interior space, or park a trailer
  • Availability for the 2025 season
  • Purchase or long-term lease
  • Open to creative land access options, including partnering with a local farm or converting business or church lots

If you have land that might be a good fit, we encourage you to reach out to Carrie. Please also help us spread the word around DuPage County to find any potential leads or strong connections. You can get in touch with her directly at carrie.khoury@gmail.com.