When a plant drops its seeds, it’s sometimes toward the end of the plant’s life cycle. The seeds don’t often fall far from the stem.
In similar fashion, Nereo Gomez, a 30-year employee of the recently closed DeGoede Bulb Farm & Gardens in Mossyrock, now operates Gorgeous Gardens less than a quarter mile from where DeGoede once was.
Gomez, along with his wife of 37 years, Morea, daughter, Ana, and many other relatives, all tend the gardens and greenhouses filled with the plants they now grow. The family business is helping to fill the void of a gardener’s paradise left by the closure of DeGoede.
Morea also worked at DeGoede with Gomez.
A staple of the Mossyrock community for nearly 50 years, DeGoede closed in the summer of 2023 after co-owners and brothers Jack and Bob DeGoede announced their retirement and sold the 160-acre mixed-field farm in January of 2024 to Wazelnut Farms in Montesano, owned by Telat Sipahioglu and his father, Mehmet.
The Siphioglus intended to convert the former bulb and flower farm into a hazelnut orchard along with utilizing the 5 acres of greenhouses for hydroponic strawberry fields to grow the berries out of season. The farm is only selling commercially, but may explore direct-to-customer sales in the future.
Just down the road at Gorgeous Gardens, though, Gomez and his family are growing a wide variety of flowers, including ever-popular lavender, herbs, berries, flower baskets and more for customers looking to indulge their green thumbs.
“It’s mostly perennials, but my main product is lavender,” Gomez said. “People can come and check it out, purchase whatever they like.”
At the time of DeGoede’s closure, Gomez and his family had already been growing and selling plants and flowers in Tacoma for years on the side. Eventually, their operation got big enough that, after DeGoede’s closure, Gomez decided to officially open his own business full time in Mossyrock.
“Full time, this is my first year,” Gomez said. “And I’ve had a lot of support from local people. They’ve passed the word.”
Gomez and his family grow everything from seeds on site, including blueberries and strawberry hanging-baskets currently ready for summer customers.
“(The strawberry hanging-baskets) was my daughter’s idea. She said, ‘Dad, why don’t you make strawberry hanging-baskets?’” Gomez said. “Last year, we did a few.”
Those few baskets sold quickly, so this year, they now have dozens with strawberries ready to go.
And while he doesn’t have 5 acres of greenhouses total like DeGoede once did, he does have five sizable greenhouses set up on his property growing a variety of other plants. Some of the plants grown for customers take more than a year to cultivate.
While customers can find many of the same flowers once sold at DeGoede at Gorgeous Gardens, Gomez is branching out and growing new varieties, including chrysanthemums, also known as mums.
“We never grew mums at DeGoede’s, so this is my new thing. It’s a nice plant that starts blooming in September,” Gomez said. “It has kind of a daisy flower.”
Gomez is thankful for his time working at DeGoede, as it was working with Bob 30 years ago as a migrant fresh from Mexico that helped him get his feet on the ground in the states.
“Bob DeGoede was my main boss. When I started with him, I told him, ‘I don’t speak much English, but I can try,’” Gomez said.
Bob was working on a new project at DeGoede at the time and told Gomez all he needed was someone who could learn and try.
“We did OK because we worked together for 30 years,” Gomez added. “He gave me a lot of tips, too, and helped me a lot.”
It was on Bob’s advice that Gomez built the first of his five greenhouses along with digging his own. Gomez added that Bob even offered financial assistance to help pay for the well digging at Gorgeous Gardens — which ended up having to be 360 feet to hit water beneath the property.
“At first they said the water was pretty high here, around 100, 110 feet (down), you should hit water. I said, ‘Really?’ and they said, ‘Oh yeah,’” Gomez said. “We hit 150, 200, 250, and they said, ‘What do you want me to do now?’”
The drillers insisted there was water somewhere down there, and since he had already drilled 250 feet deep, Gomez just told them to keep going until they finally did find water.
“As long as I have water, that’s OK,” he said.
That water is important as it’s what keeps the thousands of plants growing at Gorgeous Gardens alive and well for customers to come purchase. Gomez plans on participating in many Mossyrock community events, including the upcoming 2024 Mossyrock Blueberry Festival, scheduled to start next month on Aug. 2.
Located at 367 Mossyrock Road W., Gorgeous Gardens is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Mossyrock.
For more information, call the farm at 360-807-3718, follow it on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/MyGorgeousGardens or visit https://www.mygorgeousgardens.com/.
