Essie Day Olou, a flower farmer in Portland, Oregon, connects to her Black ancestors through the slow ceremony of tending to the land and learning from the flowers that bloom.
Essie is a flower farmer, florist, licensed massage therapist, and esthetician. Inspired by her love for native plants, pollinators, her community and the beautiful land she calls home—Essie founded Rise Blooms to share the healing beauty of flowers. Essie’s organically tended offerings include native and medicinal flower bouquets, culinary herb bundles and will soon include handcrafted herbal skincare and flower essences. Essie loves spending time wildcrafting in the forests of her beloved Tualatin Mountains. She farms on Wapato Island Farm, growing with the flowers for the past 5 years.
This story follows Essie, a flower farmer and aspiring herbalist, for a full growing season on her small flower farm. This documentary will show how Essie navigates the challenges and joys on her farm throughout a year. The film will flow along with the natural ceremonial progression of a season on a flower farm–Preparing the soil in the cold winter, rejoicing in the first blooms after the last frost, relishing in the abundance of flowers as the days get long, and sitting with emotions as blooms die and return to the ground.
Essie first envisioned her flower farm in a dream. She lives out her dream through Rise Blooms on Wapato Island in Portland, Oregon. Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” inspired her farm’s name. Her work, like the name of her farm, is dedicated to the Black community. She grows flowers for community, pollinators, healing, and for ceremony. She is deeply dedicated to the ceremony of communing with the earth and cultivating blooms. She tends to the land with slowness and intention, lifting up her ancestors with the ritual of connecting to the soil with her hands. This work is her altar to her ancestors, honoring Black herbalists and farmers who have come before her. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Essie has often been in predominantly white spaces, which has made the importance of this ancestral connection paramount for her. This film will explore and celebrate this relationship.
Essie’s connection to her ancestors through the earth has been grounding and life-giving for her. She treasures what she learns from the flowers in every stage of their growth and freely shares her learnings to others. In an effort to bring healing to her community, she has begun to incorporate herbalism into her practice and offerings. She is taking nutritionist courses, and also continuing to learn from Black Herbalists who have come before her. She is continuously integrating her learnings into her work on her farm. This shift towards integrating herbalism into her flower farming will be a key point in this story. We will potentially see Essie grow as a budding herbalist, and witness the abundant healing that her flower farm can bring to herself and her community.
This film will join us in ceremony with Essie, the land, and the blooms on her farm over the course of a year. It will be a celebration of rituals, slowness, human connection to the earth, and the healing power of flowers and Black ancestral knowledge.
I’ll spend time throughout a full growing season, visiting Essie and her farm and filming footage and interviews. Many of visits will be on my own, and our conversation will be intimate and authentic. My visits throughout the seasons will be a reflection of the beautifully slow and ceremonial approach Essie has to flower farming.
This documentary will be an ode to ritual, ceremony, soil, community, and Black ancestral knowledge. It will honor Essie and her connections to the land, the blooms, and her ancestors. I aim to celebrate slowness in the pacing of the film, reflecting Essie’s intentionally slow approach to farming. I want this film to quietly explore how this land evolves over the course of the seasons, giving space and time for the flowers to tell their part of the story too.
Visually, the documentary will follow the natural cycle of a growing season. This film will start with the incredible effort and preparation that Essie puts into the soil long before the flowers appear, showing how messy and tough this season is. Natural sounds on the farm will be utilized, and the film will start with a quietness that reflects that time of year, with the audio and also with the pacing of the editing and filming. There will be a build up and swell as the first bloom appears in early spring. The farm comes alive in the spring with an abundance of flowers, and the feeling of the film will mirror that life with music and faster cuts in the edits. As we witness the flowers die back and the seeds return to the land, the slowness will return to the treatment.
Just like Essie, I want to honor ancestors who came before me in my work— even in the treatment of the coloring and composition of the film. I’m inspired by these portraits of Emma Dupree, a Folk herbalist in North Carolina, and the soft candid portraits that Gordon Parks photographed of Black southerners like the iconic “Boy with June Bug”. The warm and earthy coloring will add natural richness to this documentary.
This moment I filmed of my mom wearing a flower crown I crafted for her captures the ethereal beauty I want to evoke in this film.
BIO
I am a Visual Storyteller specializing in video, documentary photography, illustration, and graphic design. My multimedia work communicates authentic human experiences inspired by my time in the outdoors. My most recent projects explore and honor the connection between Blackness, nature, and rest. I live in Portland, Oregon, tending to my garden and my family.