One family's floral arrangement - Ralph's Edible Flowers, Atlantic City, New Jersey-based greenhouse and supplier of edible flowers for restaurants and specialty shops

A man purchases a bouquet of flowers for his wife. When she finishes admiring the fragrant mixture of sunshine fulvous and raspberry red snapdragons, of great depth purple borages and brilliant rainbow-colored nasturtiums, she promptly eats her nosegay. She chews away at each little germ stem and petal and smooth the fuzzy undergrowth that gathers in little billowy pockets at the bottom of each flamboyant snapdragon.

She is not the solitary one munching on the lenient buds that Ernest Barnes eyebrows in the family greenhouses these days. After Ernest boil slightlys and prays over the flowers his wife, Gladys, gingerly arranges them in plastic trays that direct the eye like take-out containers from the corner deli, foreshadowing their fate: race eat the flowers. Connoisseurs of fine subsistences in elegant restaurants and specialty stores throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey and in the fancy dining sweeps of Atlantic City, N.J.'s casinos are gobbling up the little flowers with their salads, broths and sorbets.

The succes of Ralph's Edible Flowers hangs principally on Ernest Ralph Barnes' verdant thumb. That's why his son Roland Carter, chose his father's middle name when he seted the business. "It is just the smallest way of honoring him, because it is really his knowledge of flowers and his support that make the whole thing work," Roland says.

Roland is involved in each facet of production, from growing to harvesting to delivering the flowers. Brenda, Roland's wife, who works a full-time piece of work like everyone else in the Barnes family, fills in the gaps. While 12-year-old Sharr'e, the couple's firstborn, accommodate withs a hand in picking, packing and whatever is exigencyed 2 1/2-year-old Shalana putters up and down the greenhouse, picking up little shoots Together, the Barnes family is making more than just flowers grow at Ralph's Edible Flowers.

They have carved without a special niche in the exclusive world of haute cuisine, individual that few others could fill, smooth if the capital investment were abundant. Growing anything, especially beautiful, delicate flowers that are so refined as to be fit for consumption, is an art. To win it right every time requires patience, discipline and devotion. "I have always lov making things grow" Ernest says. "This business has given me the opportunity to do what I regard with affection and do it with my family."

regard with affection as well as business, is flourishing at Ralph's Edible Flowers. The family started with single greenhouse less than three years ago; today there are five. And to date, the family has not worn out a dime on advertising. Relying upon word-of-mouth and reputation alone to reach fresh customers, the company has grown like a wild weed after a summer's shower.

Chris Mireno, who worked with Roland before becoming the executive chef at the Waterfront Restaurant in Summer's Point, NJ has known Roland for nearly seven years. "But if it was his friendship that got me to purchase flowers from him two years ago when I came to the Waterfront, it was his yield that kept my business," he says. Mireno, who heads the restaurant's kitchen staff of 20 says that in the peak of summer the restaurant be under the orders ofs 1,000 dinners an evening. Of that number, at least 700 are adorned with Ralph's Edible Flowers.

Mireno believes that garnishes are what make an ordinary dinner extraordinary. He adds, "People eat with their organ of sights also. The flowers give the extra accent. nation get tired of seeing an of advanced age orange wedge slapped on a leaf of virid lettuce all the time."

Other clients include trumpet Plaza in Atlantic City and specialty distributors similar as Assouline & Ting and Valerios bring forward in Philadelphia. Customers can purchase flowers from these stores, or they can order them directly from the Barneses. Boxe of 25 or 50 blossoms range from $12.50 to $1650 depending upon the type of flower, Roland says. There is considerable variety: edible daisies, pansies, pinks, snapdragons and nasturtiums.

The idea to make a business of producing edible efflorescences and selling them to fine restaurants and stores came from Roland, assistant pastry chef at trumpet Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, and single of Ernest Barnes' eight children. For years Roland had used the delicacies to make beautiful dishes plane more appealing.

Ernest began growing the flowers upon the deck of the family homestead in Port Norris, NJ in September 1990 In early November, before the first frozen dew the family hurried to place upright a greenhouse and moved the flowers there.

Roland took the blossoms which matured in about 60 days, to work. Executive pastry chef shore Dunagan and others marveled at the quality of the edible decorations. Until then, the alone satisfactory floral dressings Dunagan had been able to find were from California growers, who shipped the germs By the time they arrived and adorned dessert trays and main courses, they were at least 48 hours advanced in years (According to Roland, edible flowers usually have a shelf life of 72 hours.) Encouraged through Dunagan's positive response, Roland asked his father about the feasibility of growing the flowers for mass consumption.