Tags: 2016, Danielle Hahn, Meeting, roses, Season 2015-2016

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For our February event, Danielle Hahn presented “A Life with Roses.” Danielle talked about growing a family and business on 15 acres in the Carpinteria foothills.

It would come as a complete surprise that Danielle Hahn would find herself immersed in a small rural community in southern California, running a thriving flower business from the surrounding acres. Here she works closely with her husband Bill in the rose gardens, manages a rose-theme gift shop on the premises with her mother Patricia, enjoys special family moments “working the rows” with her two sons Will and Geoffrey, all the while being embraced and encompassed by the richness and magic of thousands of garden roses. “I could never imagine a more perfect life; to be able to pursue my passion for timeless beauty and elegance surrounded by friends and family.”

Born in Santa Barbara, California, she attended local schools until entering Stanford University. She graduated three years later with honors in Italian Literature and Psychology. Having been a nationally ranked junior tennis player and a member of the Stanford tennis team for three years, she launched her business career coaching tennis and managing an exclusive tennis club in Manhattan. She returned to Santa Barbara and over the next 10 years opened a series of retail stores in Southern California. At the same time, she was the founder and managing partner of an innovative gift business that designed, manufactured, packaged, and ultimately delivered gifts for entertainment corporations. With the birth of Geoffrey, her second boy, in 1993, she backed away from the majority of her business responsibilities to focus on her family.

Growing from a lifelong love of flowers and gardening, Rose Story Farm has become the focal point of a wonderful mixture of business and life. From the first day the mission was to produce beautiful, fragrant, romantic garden roses in exquisite shapes and colors. Now more than 25,000 bushes of 120 varieties are scattered over the 15-acre farm. Tours are led by the family twice weekly, and a variety of seminars focused on garden design, rose cultivation and flower arranging are given throughout the year. A major theme of the educational effort is to demystify the process of growing and caring for roses. “Roses are magical and forgiving–they repay any effort on their behalf ten-fold.

We named the farm ‘Rose Story Farm’ because the roses are central to some of our most enchanting and memorable experiences. We encourage clients, visitors, and friends to exchange their rose stories with us, and in this way to share what we find romantic, passionate, joyful and sustaining.

The excitement and beauty of this enterprise and of Danielle herself has been featured in Santa Barbara Magazine, Wine Country Living, Sunset, Victoria Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Veranda, the Cottage Journal, and the Wall Street Journal. She has had articles published in the Annual Review of the American Rose Society on both flower arranging and garden design. Television coverage of Rose Story Farm has been presented on California Heartland, a PBS special, and on NBC’s Today show. Most recently, Martha Stewart Living media filmed a segment on the farm for their online American Made series. In addition to her weekly tours at the farm, Danielle is a frequent featured speaker at events that are focused on the beauty of the garden, and the special role of roses in our daily lives.”

Danielle was recently honored with the Great Rosarian of the World award for 2014. The bicoastal celebrations take place in February (Huntington Library in Pasadena) and June (New York Botanic Garden). She joined an elite group of recipients including David Austin (UK), Peter Beales (UK), Wilhelm Kordes (Germany), and Alain Meilland (France). Rose Story Farm is a successful blend of small-scale niche farming and educational outreach and has been recognized as a model for small family farms. The award, which acknowledges these achievements, is co-sponsored by the Huntington Library and the New York Metropolitan Rose Council, honoring men and women who have made significant contributions to the cultivation and appreciation of roses.