The story below is a preview from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Editor's Note: Read our colorful blog post pairing on the Blue Ridge Flower Exchange allowing Roanokers even more access to beautiful blooms!
In Southwest Virginia, a fresh crop of flower farms is coming up roses.
Courtesy of Tony Hensley / Sky Pics
The Beaver Dam Sunflower Festival attracts about 20,000 visitors annually — a boon to the local economy.
On a windswept winter day almost six months ago, Laura Stump walks through the frost-hardened rows of her small Catawba flower farm, Lark & Sky. A watery sun is skimming the tops of the mountains beyond, the last of its pale light catching on the stubbled ground. But where visitors might see only cold, bare earth, Stump sees something more:
“Early Spring, we’ll have calendulas, Bells of Ireland, feverfew, snapdragons … I try to have things that people don’t often see in the grocery store,” she says.
Sweeping her hand to the rows beyond, she gestures to an unassuming mound in the earth.
“These are the dahlias. A lot of people will dig them up, store them over the winter,” she explains, “but for two years now, I’ve been using the no-dig method, and they’ve been coming back.”
In May, Stump will peel back the tarps and unearth the plants from their protective layer of mulch, and they’ll serve as showstopping stars of her farm’s you-pick offerings for the summer.
“We’re all about beautiful survivors here,” she says. “They have to be tough.”
Courtesy of Kate Thompson
Susanna Thornton of Thornfield Farm is just one of several growers launching the Blue Ridge Flower Exchange — a co-op that connects customers with locally-grown blooms.
And perhaps it’s that exact quality – the stubborn persistence of beauty in hard places – that defines this new era in American flower farming, which, after decades of decline, has been experiencing a powerful resurgence.
Courtesy of Petal and Pail
Ashleigh Kritzberger of Petal & Pail founded her business from a decommissioned dairy barn on her family’s property.
Business is — quite literally — blooming.
In many ways, the boom can be traced back to pandemic-era lockdowns, when quarantined customers experienced a sudden hunger for self-care.
“I definitely feel COVID helped people understand the value of having fresh flowers in the home,” says Thornfield Farms’ Susanna Thornton, who says she planted 8,100 tulip bulbs last autumn for her spring harvest.
But during the worst of the pandemic, there was one big problem for flower lovers: international supply chains — which had in recent decades connected Americans to the vast majority of their cut blooms — had suddenly snapped.
Enter the neighborly flower seller at the farmer’s market, who sold fragrant bouquets wrapped in brown paper or stuffed into antique blue Mason jars. Their flowers were available, affordable, unique and locally raised. Combine those factors with a growing consumer desire for more sustainable choices, and you had the perfect opportunity for an All-American success story.
“I think a lot of people have started paying closer attention to their product origins and have realized there is a lot out there locally,” says Ashleigh Kritzberger of Petal & Pail in Buchanan, who started her operation from a decommissioned dairy barn on her family’s property. In fact, Kritzberger is currently launching a floral co-op program — Blue Ridge Flower Exchange — with Thornfield Farm, Lark & Sky and Yonderyear Farm. “There’s been this revitalization,” she says, “and it’s cool to be a part of it.”
Want to learn more about our region's blooming flower farms? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!