The 4 Essential Decisions That Could Make Or Break Your Flower Farm
Running a flower farm is no small feat, and success or failure often boils down to a few key decisions. These four make-or-break choices—where to sell, what to grow, how much to plant, and whether to hire help—can determine whether your flower farm thrives or struggles. Get any of these decisions wrong, especially when your farm is operating at a larger scale, and you may face financial losses or even failure. From misjudging demand to missing critical deadlines, the wrong decisions could leave you with fields of unsellable blooms or a market you’re unprepared to meet. The bottom line? The difference between a profitable season and one riddled with losses often comes down to these critical choices.
1. Deciding Where to Sell
One of the most pivotal choices a flower farmer makes is where and how to sell. Whether you choose wholesale, direct-to-consumer (via farmers markets, subscriptions/CSA, or a farmstand), or decide to focus on wedding and event design, each option requires a unique approach. While diversifying your sales channels can be beneficial, trying to do it all—especially without significant hired help—can quickly become unsustainable. Each sales avenue demands different marketing strategies, infrastructure, and, most importantly, different flowers.
While selling at farmers markets became our specialty, the sign says it all. At one point or another, we did everything – which I would NOT recommend.
Critical Timing:
Farmers Markets: Many markets start selecting vendors in winter, so doing your homework during the current market season is essential. Once fall has passed, you’ll lose the opportunity to evaluate potential markets while they’re in full swing.
Wholesale: Florists, wholesalers, and grower cooperatives typically secure their suppliers in late winter or early spring. Building relationships well before the growing season is crucial for ensuring you have a steady market for your flowers.
Weddings/Events: If you plan to grow flowers to use in your own wedding designs (as opposed to selling wholesale to wedding florists), booking happens months in advance. Couples and wedding planners make vendor selections long before the big day, so they’ll need to know your availability well before your season starts. Relationships with event planners and wedding florists should be nurtured in fall and winter.
Subscriptions: Winter and early spring are prime times to promote flower subscriptions, especially as holiday gifts. Offering subscription packages can help generate early-season cash flow and secure customers for the coming season.
Freebie: The Farmer’s Market Challenge
Thinking about selling at your local farmer’s market? Research your local markets before signing up as a vendor. We’ve created a handy worksheet help you audit, rate, and ultimately select the right farmer’s market location for your business.
2. Deciding What To Grow
Choosing what to grow is about much more than aesthetics. You need to select varieties that fit your growing conditions, meet market demand, and align with the sales channels you’ve chosen. For example, mixed bouquets require a strategic mix of flower types, and understanding the six different flower categories that make up the Bouquet Blueprint™ (focals, fillers, foliage, etc.) is crucial for producing well-balanced bouquets.
The wrong flower choices can lead to serious waste. Café au Lait dahlias, for instance, are popular for weddings but are often too large for market bouquets and the plants are less productive than other varieties. On the other hand, dahlias like ‘Iced Tea’ or ‘Linda’s Baby’ produce moderately sized flowers that are better suited to mixed bouquets, and are far more productive, and so may be a much better choice for direct-to-consumer sales like farmers markets and subscriptions.
Deciding which dahlias to grow is a much higher stakes decision than you probably thought. Left, this ‘Cafe au Lait Royale’ dahlia is over 10” in diameter – way too big to use in a mixed bouquet. In the center photo, a mix of pink dahlias that includes ‘Doris Duke’ (right), which are much better suited for incorporation into mixed bouquets.
Color also matters. White flowers are essential for weddings and events, but they’re often a poor choice for markets. All-white bouquets rarely sell at the farmers market, and so having too many white flowers can result in significant waste. I’ve learned this hard lesson first-hand. After deciding to move away from weddings (the stress of those events finally caught up to me) I now have a whole row of white dahlias that go largely unharvested, and a line of limelight hydrangea shrubs with hundreds more flowers than I can ever sell at the farmers market. Unharvested flowers aren’t just sad: they represent lost time (they still must be maintained – weeding, staking, deadheading, etc.), lost growing space for things we could have used more of, and ultimately, lost money.
If you’re focused on weddings, you’ll want lots of white flowers. Otherwise, planting too many white flowers just means they’ll go to waste.
Critical Timing:
Seed Orders: Ordering seeds for spring and summer varieties must be completed by late fall or early winter, as popular varieties sell out fast. Plan early to secure your desired flowers.
Long-Lead Crops: Flowers like lisianthus require even earlier planning because of their extremely long growth cycle. Certain bulb and corm varieties, like tulips, ranunculus, and anemones, need to be ordered as soon as the previous season ends.
FREEBIE: 6F Categorization Worksheet
Unsure if you grow the diversity you need in every season? Want to make sure you have grow the varieties you need for balanced bouquets in 2025? Use our handy 6F Categorization Exercise to reflect on what you grew this year and categorize your varieties by the Bouquet Blueprint™ flower types in each of the three growing seasons. This exercise allows you to find and fill in holes in your growing plan… while also becoming fluent in the 6F categories and how they’re used!
3. Deciding How Much To Plant
Balancing crop volume can be one of the trickiest decisions. Over-planting can lead to wasted blooms, while under-planting may result in missed sales opportunities. It’s essential to plan based on market demand and what your farm can handle. Even experienced farmers can struggle with this. Over-planting focal flowers or under-planting fillers, for example, can create frustrating gaps during the season.
We can never get enough filler flowers in early spring or late fall. Using “brain” celosia (Celosia cristata) as a filler flower in fall has helped us enormously, as it comes in a wide variety of colors. This buttery yellow version is ‘Chief’ gold.
Critical Timing:
Seed Starting: Every seed-sowing session is a critical decision point. This is your chance to assess how many plants you’ll need for each type of flower and adjust based on the upcoming season’s demand.
Transplanting: As seedlings move into the field, it's important to fine-tune your planting plan. Downsizing by composting perfectly good seedlings may be painful to do, but cutting back at the right time prevents overproduction.
4. Deciding How It Gets Done (Hiring Help)
At some point, most flower farmers will face the decision of whether to hire help. While going solo is tempting, there comes a point where hiring is essential—whether to scale up your business, handle labor-intensive tasks, or simply free up time for yourself.
The farm simply wouldn’t be possible without this team of hard-working folks surrounding me (I’m in the middle of the team in the photo on the left). Lauren (middle photo) has created systems within our business that have made our processes seamless, and Sonnett (right) manages all of the field work.
Critical Timing:
Field Help: Hiring for fieldwork should happen in late winter, well before the growing season begins. Skilled workers often book their jobs early, so waiting until spring can leave you short-handed.
Administrative Support: Other support roles, like bookkeeping or sales assistance, can often be hired later in the season. However, bringing on help before you reach a breaking point will save you from burnout and allow you to focus on the bigger picture.