My son looked at me quizzically and asked me a question that stopped me cold.

“Mom. Why are you growing so many flowers?”

I was taken aback. I kinda sputtered something like, well, why not? Or they are so pretty, right? or something equally vague. But he had done it. He had asked me the question that would cause me to ponder for several days.

Why was I growing so many flowers?

After all, it’s not like I would ever grow rich growing them (on the contrary!). It’s not like I’m a young farmer wanting to establish a business to support myself. Yet I have been compelled, focused, one might even say… obsessed with growing flowers, for the past five years.

I looked back to when I was growing veggies and edible flowers for restaurants, pre-2020. Growing food always made sense to me. I fed it to my family, and whatever we didn’t eat, I would share or sell. I had, in fact, built a nice productive business selling heirloom tomatoes, edible flowers, and other heirloom veg to restaurants. But then they all closed down for months because of early Covid-era restrictions, and my farming partner Gene and I were left with hundreds of heads of absolutely gorgeous lettuce and no market. (Bla.) (And that was just one crop!)

It was then that I realized how important adding beauty to the world had become to me. After all, my primary requirement for choosing new heirloom tomatoes to grow was that each new variety I chose had to be beautiful. I hoped they would taste great, of course, but it was the beauty of the veg that really attracted my attention. Everything I grew had to be drop-dead gorgeous. During this veg-growing time, I started adding a row of cutting flowers to my garden. I felt wistful, as I went out to pick tomatoes or beans, when I passed that row of cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias, every time. I’d linger, and long to grow more.

Then I realized, in my musings: There it was! It was so simple. I wanted to grow beautiful things! It wasn’t enough to just admire God’s beautiful creation…I needed to add to the truly stunning world that God created. And that’s when I put my energies into shifting from growing commercial quantities of vegetables to waves and beds and gardens full of flowers.

It’s the same way today, nearly six years later. I love to surround myself with beauty, in every way. I am simply happier that way. And growing enough flowers to share leads to adding beauty, and happiness, to other peoples’ lives, as well.

Gosh. I’m glad I worked all that out in my own head and heart, eventually!

I still grow lots of veg and other perennial crops for my family, but my energies and dreams and obsessive seed-catalog porings, lead now to growing flowers.

Lots and lots of flowers.

Now that I’ve figured this out, I probably ought to tell my son. 🙂

It’s all about adding beauty to the world, and sharing it with my friends and neighbors. There. That’s it. And. I am a little obsessed, too.

I am planning out my bouquet subscriptions for 2026, and soon I’ll share all of that with you. I am so thrilled to be designing subscription bouquets for the third year, and I simply can’t wait to get started growing the flowers for them!

Out here on our farm, we grow flowers slowly, intentionally, and locally. Not because it’s trendy, but because I think flowers should feel alive when they reach your hands — not tired from travel, not rushed into bloom, but cut and gathered at their best!

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about what’s growing, what’s ahead this season, and how our bouquet subscription works for those who want flowers to be a regular part of their lives. This is your official invitation to follow along!

Thank you for being here and for supporting local, seasonal beauty. It means the world to me!

With gratitude,
Amy