About
Sweet Piedmont Academy
Sweet Piedmont Academy is a growing library of educational resources for growers pursuing flowers as a business. With a vision to get more locally grown flowers into communities worldwide, we aim to provide the same business insights and support we wish we had when we were first growing our flower business. Our aim is to see growers thrive, not just in their skills and abilities to grow beautiful flowers, but to lead and sustain successful businesses. Whether your goals are driven by profit, passion, or both, we look forward to sharing everything we know with you.
After 10+ years growing and selling flowers, we have learned plenty about what works, what doesn’t and why. From growing 100+ species of floral ingredients and developed a proven design method for gorgeous products, to selling 6 figures in flowers each year and experimenting with nearly every revenue stream… we look forward to sharing everything we’ve learned. Ideally, we hope to spare you the losses and help guide you into big wins for your business and ultimately, the locally grown flower movement as a whole!
Topics we’re passionate about include:
The Bouquet Blueprint Framework™ - we’ve developed a proven planning, harvest, and design method that results in gorgeous bouquet products that sell and keep selling. We emphasize optimized planning processes that are repeatable, scalable, and time-efficient.
Revenue Streams For Flower Businesses - there are countless ways to make money selling your homegrown flowers, but which paths should you pursue? We help you identify which revenue stream makes the most sense for your business and provide resources that support your business model.
Sweet Piedmont Signature Color Palettes - our Signature Color Palettes have been carefully developed over years of floral design and can be used for any floral offering, from market bouquets to high-end weddings. Our color and variety pairings have brought repeated success to our business and we can’t help but share the beauty!
Sweet Piedmont Flower Farm
Sweet Piedmont is a sustainable cut flower farm nestled within the hills of Waterford, Virginia (USA). With a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west and our land set apart from traditional residential developments, our farm is a sort of oasis from the modern distractions and hustle of life. It is our hope that visitors are enlivened and refreshed by the natural beauty of this place. And for those who receive our flowers, we hope every bloom and branch serves as an invitation into the joy and beauty of every harvest season.
Sweet Piedmont sustainably grows, designs, and sells specialty cut flowers to our surrounding communities in multiple ways! From farmer’s markets to bouquet memberships, from wholesale flowers to self-serve farm shop, from floral design workshops to you-picks, from event rentals to full-service wedding design… we’ve done it all. As we shift our attention to supporting growers through Sweet Piedmont Academy, we continue to offer Signature Bouquets via subscriptions, Bloom Buckets for florists and DIYers, a handful of exclusive Flower Events throughout the year, and custom design for select events and weddings. Our flower farm is available for private events, professional photography, and volunteer opportunities. Learn more at www.SweetPiedmont.com.
Meet Sharon!
Founder of Sweet Piedmont Farm & academy
Sharon has always been an admirer of beauty and lover of nature. Her mother's stories of orchard life and her father's passion for art and architecture inspired her love of growing and design. Professionally, Sharon’s career has taken her down the path of science and technology - she served in the White House and now works in the private sector contributing to innovations in nanotechnology, climate change, and space. But at her core her greatest passion is flowers - growing, designing, and teaching others to do the same! With a built in fascination for both science and farming, she finds herself most drawn to the color theory side of things, forever coming up with new signature palettes and curating her fields to produce not only what is subjectively beautiful, but what scientifically appeals to the human brain while solving the puzzle of what ingredients work together on a technical level.
Sharon is a Foundation Flower (have you taken our quiz yet?!) and her favorite color is pink. She and her husband, Mike, have plenty of animals on the farm - a dog, two cats, a 36-year-old Amazon parrot, and 4 hens named after famous women she admires. You’ll never find her without a tumbler of seltzer water in hand… and you bet her camera isn’t far away! When Sharon’s not curating a flat lay of gorgeous blooms in her studio or cooking up her next batch of content for Sweet Piedmont Academy, she’s watching The Lost Kitchen.
Meet Lauren!
Business Manager
Lauren is passionate about empowering small businesses and guiding them to more efficient, sustainable, and profitable outcomes. From real estate to financial advising to mental health to floristry, Lauren has improved operations, internal communications, products, messaging, digital presences, and ultimately sales for all kinds of businesses. Before arriving at Sweet Piedmont, Lauren created and ran a 7-figure wedding floral brand and since then, she’s been running operations at Sweet Piedmont, where the quality of locally, sustainably grown flowers has given her a whole know perspective on what it means to run a successful business. She loves a good sweat in the fields and does a lot of floral design around here, but there’s nothing as rewarding to her than finding a way through tough business barriers and keeping the team on track.
When Lauren’s not at the farm, you’ll find her hanging outdoors, working on passion projects, and catching her daily dose of the Armchair Expert podcast.
Meet Sonnett!
Farm Manager
Sonnett is passionate about cultivating beauty through the power of streamlined, orderly systems and powerful planning. A certified horticulturalist of the Master Gardeners and seasoned flower farmer, she brings expert insight at each stage of a plant’s life cycle and is intuitively connected with the rhythms and relationships within our farm’s ecosystem. To her, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing a project completed or keeping her team and resources optimized for efficient, productive results. Here at Sweet Piedmont, nearly every (if not, every) annual flower we grow receives personal attention from Sonnett, having been germinated from seed in our award-winning greenhouse and nurtured to maturity in our tunnels, gardens, or fields.
When Sonnett’s not at the farm, she is tending to her own garden, playing with her two Australian cattle dogs, and trying out unique international cuisines with her best friend (who happens to be her husband 😉), Patrick.
The 8 images above, as well as the professional team photos you may find around our website are taken by the lovely Erica D. Photography. We work with her each and every year to take our team photos at the end of harvest season, capturing the hearts and hands that make our farm thrive. Inquire for family portraits and business shots here on her website.