Stanford University archaeologist Laura Jones wasn’t looking for flower farms — at least not at first.
She was researching the school’s early land-leasing practices when a retiring colleague gave her some maps of Stanford from the 1950s.
As Jones looked closer, she noticed familiar areas — where Stanford Shopping Center, the school’s research park and graduate student housing are today — shaded in with what seemed like colored pencil.
“They’re coded for what flower is being grown,” she said.
Jones cross-checked the map with aerial photographs from the time. What emerged were patterns — clear outlines of fields in bloom. The layouts of the plots were similar, recognizable in terms of shape and size. Plus, Jones said, there was usually a small greenhouse on each field.
To Jones, the parcels were notable for another reason, too.
“Next to the colors, in … dark black pencil, are the names of the farmers, and they’re all Chinese and Japanese,” Jones said.
Flower fields. Asian American growers. She wanted to know more.
For much of the 20th century, this stretch of the Peninsula was home to seas of chrysanthemums, asters and irises.
According to a 1948 issue of the University of California’s California Agriculture journal, about 200 acres of chrysanthemums — imagine roughly 150 football fields — were grown in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties at the time. The total valuation of the crop amounted to roughly $2 million.
The industry was shaped in large part by Japanese, Italian and Chinese farmers. Some of these flowers were grown on Stanford lands between the 1890s and 1960s, in plots leased to Asian American farmers.
In her research, Jones has uncovered more about the contributions of Chinese American growers in particular. Many got their start on Stanford lands, establishing a model of farming that spread throughout the community.
Much of this history was never formally documented, something Jones is hoping to change with her Forgotten Flowers research project. She’s collaborating with community organizations, including the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association, to help clarify the history.
At a time when discriminatory laws made land ownership a challenge, leasing land was a common option for many immigrants. Leland and Jane Stanford, Jones said, were willing landlords.
Jim Mok was one such lessee. He spent much of his American life in the Stanfords’ orbit, carving out a path that many Chinese immigrants on the Peninsula would later follow.
Hailing from Guangdong Province, Mok worked as a foreman on the Stanfords’ land, leading a team of Chinese workers in planting the emblematic 166 palms lining the approach to the university.
Founding Director of San Francisco’s Chinatown History & Culture Association George Chin said Mok was also a leader in the local Chinese community.
“Because he’s a foreman,” Chin said, “he employed some of his fellow clansmen, relatives and whatnot.” In the end, Chin said, most of the Stanfords’ Chinese workers ended up coming from Guangdong as well.
Chin believes that Mok initially learned the business of commercial flower growing from Japanese immigrants. After modeling the practice in his own community, Chin said other Chinese immigrants followed suit.
“When he started growing commercially,” Chin said, “he recruited his fellow relatives, villagers and people that he knew from the same region.”
Chinese growers were an important part of the shift towards flower cultivation, but they were not alone. Japanese and Italian immigrant farmers had been building flower operations across the Bay Area too, creating a patchwork industry.
It was a gradual transition, taking shape around the early 1900s, as the demand for cut flowers started to accelerate. “They discovered that they can sell flowers in San Francisco and make much more profit compared to vegetables,” Chin said.
For researchers like Jones, talking with the families of growers has proved one of the best ways to better understand this story.
Chin, of the Chinatown History & Culture Association, grew up on a Palo Alto flower farm in the 1960s and ‘70s. His dad, Arthur Y. Chin, came to the U.S. in 1923 and quickly found his way into the flower business, following in Mok’s footsteps.
Looking back, Chin said the farm was the center of family life.
His mother was the backbone of it all — working the fields, preparing cut flowers for sale, cooking meals for the crew and raising three children who chipped in too.
“When I was a teenager, there was a little bit of resentment,” Chin said. “I cannot join the sports club or after-school activities because I have to be home working.”
Wanda Ching remembers her childhood similarly. She grew up on an East Palo Alto flower farm on land her parents owned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, where she spent her childhood summers working alongside her brothers. It was precision work, where nimble children’s fingers proved a big help.
“So to get the big chrysanthemum, you had to use the thumbs and pick off what they call the little suckers, so that there was only one big flower,” she said.
By the end of the summer, her nails were packed with dirt.
While her parents worked late into the evening, Ching and her brothers slept nearby. “I never knew a babysitter,” she said. “They put bedding into the barn area so that when we got tired, we’d just sleep on the bedded area.”
At harvest time, Ching remembers her parents gathering the cut chrysanthemums into bundles to prepare for shipping.
“They would tie it at the end and then put it on the newspaper and roll it, so they protected the flower and were able to make deliveries,” she said.
Ching said many of the flowers were shipped across the country. About 75% of cut blooms from San Mateo and Santa Clara counties were shipped east, according to California Agriculture.
The rest were sold locally, and Ching said her family sold their flowers at their own store and at the San Francisco Flower Market.
“My father would have to leave at 3 o’clock in the morning [to head to market],” Ching said. She only occasionally made the trip.
Chin said he remembers his dad packing up their family truck with fresh-cut flowers to sell at the wholesaler. He’d also collect some other farmer’s flowers to take with him. It was just one of many ways this group of Chinese American growers looked out for each other.
“In order to protect each other and fight against the competition, the Chinese growers … formed a Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association,” Chin said. The Association, founded in 1956, offered a sense of support and community.
By the late 1970s, one report shows that the Association had grown to nearly 140 Chinese growers. Italian and Japanese growers formed their own associations. Jones’ project, focusing on Stanford lands, highlights the contributions of Asian American growers.
“These growers had essentially self-organized into cooperatives,” Jones said, “so that they could, in fact, afford mass shipping.”
At its peak, California’s flower industry was massive. In 1947, commercial cut flower production in the state’s largest flower-growing counties was valued at more than $25,000,000.
The small plots of land Jones saw on her map are part of that story and speak to that demand. But why flowers?
“In large part for corsages, which is a tradition we don’t really follow as much anymore,” Jones said. “It’s really rare, but it was huge between 1920 and about 1960.”
Old photographs of Cal vs. Stanford football games serve as evidence of this flower-mania. Spectators often wore elaborate corsages. Stanford fans chose white chrysanthemums with red pipe cleaners shaped into an “S.” Cal fans opted for similar designs in blue and yellow.
At every step, Chinese growers worked together to tackle new business opportunities.
“One of the things that’s interesting about flower growing and also true about vegetable farms is that you can make a living with a fairly small acreage,” Jones said. “That’s a real opportunity for immigrants to come in and start something for their families.”
For Chin and Ching, flower farming offered their families a chance at upward mobility. “They actually want[ed] us to go get a better education,” Ching said, “so that we wouldn’t have to be farming.”
In the latter half of the 20th century, the flower industry began to decline. By the 1980s, it became more economical to ship cut flowers from South America. At the same time, Bay Area real estate was starting to boom alongside the technology industry.
“Flower growers were starting to sell their land,” Ching said. “They closed down the farms, and cashed in and they made the money and invested it elsewhere.”
The farm Ching grew up on is now home to a 7-11, among other buildings. Chin’s childhood stomping ground is now a condo.
For Chin, it’s all the more reason to keep this history alive, and Jones’ Forgotten Flowers Project is working to do just that.
Last year, Jones and Chin helped organize a corsage-making event on Stanford’s campus. They brought in corsage kits from San Francisco’s Chinatown, and about 200 participants showed up to take part.
“It was kind of exciting because you are seeing people really intensely learning from the past,” Chin said. “That history is still alive, the tradition is still alive.”