Welcome!

We’re Dave and Karin Lyon and we started Four Winds Flowers in our backyard garden in Minnesota in 2022. Dave works as a high school math teacher and we joke that his role with the flowers is the “M.I.S. - Manager of Infrastructure and Sanity” since Karin can get a little carried away with wanting to grow ALL THE THINGS! Karin is a mental health counselor and has found growing to be her own form of therapy finding a sense of peace in the garden after holding space for many tough stories. Nala is our Malamute/Shepherd/Akita mix and takes her job very seriously, sometimes staying up all night to protect the garden from…something, maybe the deer?

Where does the name Four Winds come from?

The best part about giving someone flowers is the joy it brings and the way someone’s face lights up when they see stunning natural beauty. As a counselor, it can take years of hard work to help someone find their way back to joy. Growing and giving flowers feels like magic, bringing what seems like instantaneous joy by comparison.

There’s a passage in the Bible in which God tells Ezekiel to call on the four winds to breathe new life into dead and dry bones (chapter 37). Who hasn’t experienced the wearying effects of life, making us feel dead and dry inside?

Our hope is that the flowers we grow bring a breath of fresh new life to you and those you share them with! We all need more life and more beauty and we can bring these things to each other in many small ways - one of which is giving flowers!

How did it start?

My (Karin’s) flower growing obsession started in 2019 as a way to try to save money on all the perennials we wanted in our backyard. My mom was living nearby so we could care for her during her journey with cancer. She loved gardens and flowers and I didn’t realize how much I grew just to be able to have a beautiful patch to show her. Dave got me a rack and some lights so I could start seeds in our basement and I couldn’t stop! Now we love bringing the joy of flowers to our friends family and neighbors.

Farming has been in the family, my sister was an organic veggie grower for many years and I can’t seem to get away from the memories I have from the season I spent helping on her farm - always feeling a little dirty and sore, connecting with people working side by side and the continual antics of the farm animals. My mom instilled a deep love of all things barny, oohing and aahing at all the little farmsteads we’d pass on road trips in the midwest.