A Letter To Flower Farmers Growing in Small Spaces

I have a confession to make.

All these years of growing and farming and designing and then the subsequent years of coaching and mentoring and education on flower farming has always been with the intent to provide individuals with the means and knowledge of being able to fulfill dreams and reach goals.

But the same as any other pursuit - whether professional or personal - the more that you delve and grow within a field, the more you start realizing just how much you don’t know.

Or in my case, I started to realize just how diverse the flower farming world is. Even the name itself is misleading because there are so many purposes and ways in which people grow flowers. All for different benefits and different goals, and everyone needs to know how to grow flowers, but the intent and purposes may be different.

I started to realize that much of the advice I had given over the years had the bias of coming from my experience and perspective. Which isn’t bad, and has proven to be invaluable for many, many people over the years but I have the ability to now see and acknowledge that my advice comes solely from my perspective.

Therefore someone who is growing flowers for a U-Cut operation may not find my advice to grow certain types of perennials useful - because those perennials which are lovely in a compote arrangement would be completely overlooked by their customer.

Or the person who is growing for a farmer’s market may try to grow a whole bunch of Queen Red Lime zinnias because I’ve extolled many lines on their beauty - only to find that customers pass them over because the muted colors don’t pop the way that they should.

Or the grower who is installing an entire acre of peonies who will have to wait years for what will ultimately be likely a successful operation in the long run may second-guess themselves because I put more emphasis on the short-term, highly productive annuals.

Again, I don’t necessarily think that any of the advice I give is bad advice, because it’s advice that does make sense on a general level and has totally made sense for my set of circumstances. But I think that now I’m more aware of where I am at in my flower growing journey, as well as my strengths and limitations in giving advice, I want to be more mindful and be more helpful.

That’s why I’m going to be hyperfocusing on a niche.

You’ve likely read the books I’ve written - the 400 Square Foot Flower Farm and the Urban Flower Farm as well as the Simplified Flower Farm - and in terms of being efficient and effective with small scale flower farming they’re still very pertinent and good information.

But I wanted to be able to be more specific and be able to reach the people who my advice would be be able to help. And while my advice definitely can help large scale growers, growers who are growing for market bouquets, growers who are doing this as a full-time job, I want to also reach the flower farmers and growers who aren’t the typical flower farmer.

By this I mean I want to try and help

• The flower farmers who aren’t working on a grand scale - who are maybe just growing in a small plot, or are growing in their backyard or in an allotment

• The flower farmers who are doing this part-time. Whether it’s family, work, medical or physical reasons or just not being confident in doing this as a full-time gig, there are plenty of us who are just growing on a part-time basis.

• The flower farmers who are floral designers first and growers second - and don’t necessarily have the time, energy or want to grow large amounts of flowers, but would rather grow the flowers that compliment their design work the best

• The flower farmers who aren’t in a place to make the commitment of establishing a large scale growing setup. Maybe they’re growing on rented land, or are dabbling with the idea of growing flowers professionally, or perhaps just aren’t sure of what they exactly want but they do know that flowers hold the answer.

These are the people that I want to reach. These are also the people that I feel would also be best able to speak to regarding our experiences and be best able to help.

(And note, if you don’t fit this profile, that’s totally okay! That’s again not to say that my advice wouldn’t be helpful or be transformative for you. Growing advice is growing advice and business advice is still good business advice. You are always welcome here.)

I’m not knocking big scale flower growers.

That is (and never will be) the intent of my writing and focus.

Big scale flower growers are indeed the big ones, and they are the ones who are leading the revolution of flower growing and flower farming and continue to set the bar for the rest of us to be able to have a place to exist in the flower world. We stand on the shoulders of giants who have come before us, some of whom we may not even know came before us as pioneers who created the path we all walk on.

But as a movement like the local flower movement continues to expand and grow and evolve, ultimately the movement will splinter into smaller sub-movements and groups. It’s what just happens as more and more people become involved and the movement expands.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been discussing and educating about growing flowers and flower farming for years now. When I first started, there were hardly any courses (Erin of Floret had one of the few) and hardly any books written on the subject either (Lynn Byzinski’s and perhaps Lisa Mason Ziegler) But as time has gone on and flower farming has exploded in popularity and scale, I have realized I no longer need to carry the standard for everyone - there are other people who are educating and leading the way now.

And each of us have a different subset and focus. There are now dahlia hybridizers, zinnia breeders, tulip specialists, people who have become wildly successful by offering photography opportunities and community activities at their farms, large scale growers whose blooms are shipped across the entire country, and almost every subset and specialty has industry leaders.

The industry has also changed as well. No longer are local flowers an odd and eccentric subset - we are now at the point where local flowers have become more and more present among floral designers and the public, and the presence of locally grown flowers has never been stronger. Even the value of nature and plants and flowers has increased throughout the past five years.

While yes, all of us would likely want to live on a beautiful acreage in a rural area, it’s not a possibility for many of us. Whether it’s needing to be close to family, providing economic and social opportunities for ourselves and our families, being unable to obtain land or a whole host of other reasons, the dream of an actual physical farm may be out of reach for a lot of people.

I used to think that would preclude you from being able to preclude flowers. And yes, in some senses it may prevent you from growing in a specific way.

For example, because we’re small scale we will never be able to grow the amount of peonies that would be needed in order to be able to sustain itself as a wholesale business. We can grow a few, but not nearly enough to even do a single wedding - not even in a few years when they are fully grown.

And yet, while there are many opportunities that may not be available for us, others have arisen.

Take for example our recent attempt at breeding zinnia seeds. While we weren’t cutting the zinnias for direct sale, the breeding project proved to be quite successful - and as a small scale grower it was quite easy to produce a lot of seeds that flew off the shelves.

Another example was our move towards one-on-one floral design classes. Taking on students who were interested in designing with locally grown flowers and learning how to make wild, naturalistic arrangements was an absolute joy - while also enabling us to keep growing our business.

Another example was our ability to start focusing on small scale elopement weddings and other small scale events and private engagements. Instead of focusing on the big, flashy, large-scale weddings we instead focused on the more intimate, simple weddings, which allowed us to pay more attention and give extra care to the design work we were doing.

What I’ve found over the years is that bigger is not always better. Even if you can scale up and expand your business, there is always a cost to that expansion. In our case it was a disruption of work-life balance, to the point where both of us were burnt out and not even caring about the work that we were doing so long as there would finally be an end to everything - and we finally made the decision to make a big change.

But this is where I think that one of the ways we can move forward is with small scale flower farms.

We don’t HAVE to do it all.

If you don’t want to do weddings, don’t do weddings.

If you don’t want to do farmer’s markets, don’t do farmer’s markets.

If you don’t want to sell to florists, don’t sell to florists.

Despite what everyone else may tell you - and despite what other flower farmers may be saying are a MUST to do, you don’t technically have to do anything that doesn’t work for your situation or circumstances.

What I’ve learned over the years is that the circumstances for each grower is so uniquely different it would practically be impossible to duplicate the circumstances for any grower. Add in the complexity of growing conditions, markets, relationships between the grower and their individual customers, and it’s difficult to say that there are any universal truths hat links every single grower together.

But after years and years of frustration of not understanding why things weren’t working for us after listening to advice from industry leaders, or reading and listening and watching other farmers talk about topics that just weren’t relevant or a major issue for us, I’ll admit that I started drifting away from the community.

It’s what I now realize was as sign that it wasn’t that we were doing anything wrong or that there was anything wrong with us - it’s just that we had wildly different circumstances from many of the people who were growing.

But this is what I wanted to say. And this is where my new passion lies.

I’ve always been a helper - that’s always been in my nature - and this is no exception.

I hope that you’ll join me on this new adventure.

And if you’re a small scale flower farmer (or are an aspiring one) you’re in for a treat. We’re going to cut through the static and noise out there in terms of growing and flower farming to be able to be effective and productive for you to be able to create your dreams and reach your goals.

Thank you as always for being here - I’m so excited for this year and season and growing alongside all of you.

~Kee-ju