GRAND RAPIDS, Ohio — GardenView Flowers in Providence Township is cutting its "U-Pick" season short, ending it on Labor Day.
The founder and lead designer, Jenny Van Houtte, said the business' flowers are drying out sooner than expected due to the lack of rain.
"We do have irrigation systems but, obviously, it's not enough to support the flowers the way that we need them to so usually once a week is a good rain," Van Houtte said.
While GardenView staff is hoping for rain, Van Houtte said the flowers have gone through a dry period of eight weeks without it.
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"We want to close early so that we can let the flowers rejuvenate and grow back a little bit before some of our later season parties because we do want everything to look nice when they come in and pick with their parties," she said.
That problem has caused U-Pick to close earlier than expected.
"We don't want people to have a bad experience," Van Houtte said. "We want them to actually come to GardenView and be like, 'it was amazing' and usually that's what people say, but it gets to a point where you're like, the flowers just are not looking up to our standards and to us, it's kind of really important."
U-Pick is usually open to the public for about four more weeks. But when Perrysburg resident Grace Bromley saw it was ending early, she took the day to pick flowers with her mom after getting news on the closure.
"Saw the post on Facebook that today was the last day for GardenView, sent it to my mom and said 'do you wanna go make a bouquet?' The weather's gorgeous and so we thought why not come out and do a fun little activity," Bromley said.
While Labor Day did offer gorgeous weather for flower picking, Van Houtte said the weather, aside from the lack of rain, is another reason the flowers are struggling.
"We're also seeing a change in the weather, the temperature this year," Van Houtte said. "I noticed some of our sedums changing about two weeks ago and usually it would be changing right about now going into fall. A few weeks ago I was saying it feels like it's already fall, which is kind of crazy so it feels like we're seeing a change in the flowers too."
At the same time next year, Van Houtte said GardenView will have more options as they are planting perennials that will rely less on the weather and more on irrigation.
While self-picking is closed, pre-scheduled private events and group visits will still take place.