The Snarky Elevator Pitch 🎤

We’re Dapper Dahlias: home of 300+ rare, unicorn-status dahlias grown by a guy named Moose (yes, that’s really his name). After surviving childhood hay-bale boot camp, a tragic two-week career at Arby’s, and 35 years in greenhouses, Moose now breeds, grows, and ships the sassiest, most jaw-dropping dahlias you’ll ever meet. Basically? We make flowers so fabulous that even UPS can’t ruin them (hopefully!).

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How a Moose Ended Up in a Dahlia Patch 

From farm chores to floral fireworks, here’s how the Moose found his petals.

Let’s get this out of the way first: the name Moose didn’t come from my refined table manners or dainty movements in the garden. Nope. I was a big, strong farm-kid magnet. You know how some people attract mosquitos? I attracted hay bales. My childhood summers were spent tossing itchy, 60-pound chunks of grass cubes onto wagons, into barns, and sometimes straight onto my own face. Friends with small farms always knew: “Call Moose, he’ll help. He can’t say no.” Spoiler: they were right.

But my gardening roots started even earlier. My mom was a flower wizard—roses, veggies, you name it. My dad was her trusty sidekick. And me? I was the unpaid child laborer who thought outside chores were marginally better than dishes or folding underwear. But somewhere between yanking weeds and getting bribed with Orange Slice Soda (or Sunkist in a pinch), I actually fell in love with plants. (Don’t tell younger me. He would’ve rolled his eyes back so hard.)

At 16, I made the tragic mistake of getting what I thought was a “real job” at Arby’s. Two weeks of smelling like roast beef later, I waved goodbye to curly fries and happily ran back to the dirt. A garden center hired me, and that’s where the magic clicked. Sure, I was grunt labor—moving bags of mulch that weighed more than a toddler moose—but I loved it. Plants > roast beef. Every time.

Fast forward: I tried college as a “serious” future doctor (ha), then a Landscape Architect (double ha). Turns out, drawing circles on paper and calculating drainage wasn’t my jam. And fun fact: Landscape Architects don’t actually touch plants. They specify plants, which is like telling someone else to eat your dessert. No thanks. So, I switched to Ornamental Horticulture and Business—finally combining my nerdy side with my plant-obsessed side.

Somewhere along this plant-packed journey, I met my amazing wife, Adelia. Together, we started Garden Gateway in Hyde Park, Utah, back in 2002. Over 23 years later, we’re still at it—running a garden center while I play mad scientist in the greenhouse. And along the way, I became utterly obsessed with dinnerplate dahlias. (Shocking, right? Big flowers. Moose. It’s a whole thing.)

In 2023, I helped start Lyon Park Dahlias, growing and shipping rooted cuttings across the U.S. I handled the growing (fun) and the shipping (less fun—packing boxes at 2 AM is not glamorous). But in 2025, I decided it was time to unleash my own brand: Dapper Dahlias. Why “Dapper”? Because if you’re going to grow the most jaw-dropping, unicorn-rare dahlias on the planet, they deserve to look sharp. (And also because Moose’s Dahlias sounded a little too much like a steakhouse.)

Today, Dapper Dahlias is rocking a catalog of 300+ varieties—rare beauties from the U.S., Australia, Austria, the U.K., Sweden, Canada, France, and beyond. These aren’t just flowers; they’re floral fireworks. Unicorns with petals. The Beyoncé of the garden. We grow them as top-notch rooted cuttings and ship them with military-grade care to protect them from the chaos gremlins at UPS.

So here we are: me, The Gardening Moose, and our dashing dahlias. Laughing, growing, and sharing flowers that make people stop in their tracks and go, “Whoa. I need that.” Which is honestly the best kind of gardening magic there is.