Blue Ridge Blooms, By the Bunch

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Editor's Note: This colorful blog post sure pairs beautifully with our May/June 2023 feature "Bloom Town" which can be read here!

A new regional flower exchange aims to connect local buyers to local blooms.

For Roanoke florist Kimberly Lunsford, a local bloom can’t be beat. The anemones look like watercolors, some with five different shades to a single flower. The ranunculuses are “huge and gorgeous,” she says, and each lisianthus seems to last forever. It’s why Lunsford and other florists in the area have bought up whatever they could from local growers over the years. 

“There’s no substitute for something that’s been grown locally, cut that morning, and brought to you,” Lunsford says. “Something flown from South Africa can’t compare to it. Even if it’s double the price, it’s going to be double the size, double the quality. Those are things people remember. And that’s what you want for somebody’s wedding day. Something they’re going to remember.”

To help Roanoke buyers better access unique local blooms, four flower farms teamed up this year to form the Blue Ridge Flower Exchange. The collective of growers works through an online platform, Rooted Farmers, to enable the region’s floral designers and members of the public to order sustainably-produced, locally-grown flowers from multiple farms in one go.

Members include Thornfield Farm and Petal and Pail in Buchanan, Lark and Sky Farms in Catawba, and Yonderyear Farm in Rockbridge Baths. Susanna Thornton, of Thornfield Farms, hopes to bring in more. “Flower farming in general is having a moment,” she says. "There are more resources out there. There’s a fair number of small growers everywhere. I’ve worked with different growers in the area, both selling flowers to each other and trading ideas. A lot of us do wedding and design on the side, so there’s a mixed level of knowledge about the floral industry. And what became clear is that all of us would like to sell more flowers to more designers.”

That hasn’t always been easy to do. There have been logistical roadblocks to buying locally, Thornton and Lunsford explain. Quantity is one of them: A big wedding can demand 100 to 300 stems of white flowers, for instance, and to get them, a designer may have to pool stems bought in three different orders from three different growers. “That becomes three extra steps for them, and three extra invoices to track, and three extra bills to pay,” Thornton says. “The more layers there are in any business transaction, the harder it becomes, and the less likely it is to happen.”

And with one-to-one ordering, there’s a lot of back and forth. “You’ll have a conversation with each individual grower: what do you have, how many stems will you have, what color are they, send me a picture,” Lunsford says. “It’s a lot of work for the grower. It’s a lot of work for me.”

Rooted Farmers takes up that backend work, allowing the Blue Ridge Flower Exchange’s growers to coordinate their inventory, connect with buyers directly, and sell from multiple farms to a single buyer. “This online ordering platform is such a step up for us, because it takes the logistics challenge away, and then they’re free to shop,” Thornton says. Lunsford has found growers she’s never worked with before, whom she now buys from through the exchange.

The exchange started out with a focus on designers and florists, but Thornton and her fellow growers soon realized that many members of the public wanted to buy blooms through it as well. So they added a retail option to the exchange’s profile on the Rooted Farmers platform. Buyers can make a free account and choose from seasonal blooms available each week, like ranunculus, tulips, and mixed arrangements, for local pickup or delivery within a 30-mile radius.

Thornton hopes to set up a storefront one day, offering wholesale and retail buyer days, classes, and workshops. “People could come and just gorge on the gorgeous blooms,” she says.

Lunsford’s favorite local blooms to buy are also some of Thornton’s favorites to grow. Thornton loves lisianthus for its tenacity. It’s hard to grow at first, but once established, the plant becomes “super hardy,” Thornton says. “Drought tolerant. Tough as nails. I love the funny dynamic of that flower.” And to her, the ranunculus may be the most beautiful flower. “They unfurl in a magical way,” she says. “But they’re crazy to grow. They start in these weird spider-like corms, they have to be babied all winter long, and they can suffer a lot of different problems. They’re a puzzle.”

Lunsford has long admired Thornton and Ashley Kritzberger of Petal and Pail, as a buyer of Kritzberger’s flowers and Thornton’s produce for years. Seeing them bring growers together to form the exchange has been “amazing to watch,” she says. “The amount of grit is incredible.”