Dreamy Blooms at the Petal Mettle Flower Farm in Waialua

One’s raison d’être is sometimes discovered in the most unexpected places. Laarni Gedo stumbled across hers in a Hale‘iwa vegetable patch, in the form of a show-stopping onion blossom springing from its bulb. “It was life-changing,” she says. “It was just so beautiful—like a flower bursting out of a flower bursting out of a flower.”

At the time, Gedo was focused on a career in art, but when her partner was awarded 5 acres of land on the North Shore for agricultural development in a business competition, she traded life in town to help launch the farm. Her love for blooms deepened when, soon after, her father fell ill and went into hospice. Gedo found solace in business planning and sowing the seeds for Petal Mettle, her pesticide-free flower farm (now in Waialua) where she cultivates 60-plus species, creates gorgeous floral arrangements, and whips up herbal oils and serums.

“Mettle is the perfect word,” she says. “I liked the idea of just going for it and having the grit to overcome sadness and adversity.”

petalmettle.com, @petalmettle