My Flower Story

My first career was as a pharmacist for clinical research studies and then a medical writer for the pharmaceutical industry. But it all changed in 2015 when I started a side hustle flower farm in a vacant lot in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. I was able to leave my full time job in 2019 and focus solely on my passion for flowers. This prequel of Jig-Bee was a fun-filled with all the revenue streams a flower farmer could pursue - florist sales, management of a flower farm collective, flower CSAs, full service and DIY weddings and events, grocery sales, farmers markets, pop-ups, and eventually a flower market style brick and mortar store. And this was all on ½ acre of land. I kept adding more sales outlets, and getting more stressed and less sleep. It was unhealthy and unsustainable.

I’ve been saving seeds of unicorn blooms since I first started farming in Philadelphia 2015. Unicorn blooms are those one of a kind colors that show up in your garden or flower field. These can be a volunteer plant or something unique found in one the standard colors or mixes that you grow every year. Beautiful bronze crested celosia, an ombre cream to pink zinnia and so many other dried flower heads in organza bags were tucked into the back of my seed stash over the years. But I never found time to put these new and exciting colors into my crop plan. 

I finally got it together in 2021 when I hired my first farm manager, Althea, to manage field planting and harvest. She had trained with Truelove Seeds who are doing amazing work at preserving culturally important seed varieties (please check them out!). Althea and I talked a lot about what we could save on the farm and how to go about it. That same season this beautiful pale lavender scabiosa (pincushion flower) grew in out Oxford Blue scabiosa planting.

I flagged the plant and resisted cutting it until the seed heads dried. I crumbled (threshed) the seeds and grew them out as seedlings that same fall for overwintering. The next spring (2022) they came back mostly true to the pale lavender color. My florist customers loved the fresh bunches of pale lavender scabiosa so I knew I had to keep this seed line going. 

The seed conversations in 2021 came at a perfect time since I soon began considering relocating the farm to Vermont. Vermont is a far less populated area with a lot more flower farms than Philadelphia. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell fresh flowers at the same volume as I did in Philadelphia - plus I was tired of buckets of water and flowers dumping over in my van! 

I started researching the feasibility of seed production. What a wide and deep rabbit hole I fell into….well wide and deep for vegetable seed producers. Surprisingly, there isn’t a concise resource about growing flowers for seed. I love a challenge and a good special interest deep dive. I scoured the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) archives, plus dove into all of the blog posts of independent seed companies, seed podcasts, and books about seed saving and production that I could find. I pieced it together to come up with a loose plan to get started.

I’ve been growing flowers for seed production in Vermont since 2022. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a Seed Producers program through the Organic Seed Alliance for 2023 which gave me a solid foundation to develop my seed company. I also completed the Seed Farmer Mentorship with Dan Brisebois in 2024.