Episode 43 | No Flowers, No Food | Dee Hall Goodwin on Teaching Climate Through Flowers, Building Black Flower Farmers & Beautifully Disrupting an Aesthetic Industry

In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford is in a rich and grounding conversation with floral designer, horticulturalist  and agricultural leader Dee Hall Goodwin. She is the founder of Mermaid City Flowers and the global network Black Flower Farmers. Living in Norfolk, Virginia, with roots in Brooklyn and St. Lucia, Dee invites us into a world where flowers are portals into climate awareness, cultural memory and regenerative possibility. From transforming her front lawn into a micro flower farm to source wedding flowers to rejecting the extractive global flower industry, Dee redefines what it means to live sustainably with softness and power.Together, they explore the intersections of Black land stewardship, coastal climate realities and the radical act of growing what you need, from basil in your bouquet or community across continents. Dee shares how flowers become a “medium, not the message,” offering an accessible entry point into deeper environmental truths, while honoring ancestral practices that have always existed beyond the language of “sustainability.” As a Black floral farmer, this episode is a reminder that the practice is expansive.https://www.mermaidcityflowers.com/Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows