Some of my customers say “I love your wildflowers” and I smile & say thank you but I’m never sure how to explain that my cultivated flowers that I’ve worked with for anywhere between 6 months to thirteen months are NOT wildflowers that popped up on their own which I foraged! I’ve planned the gardens for months before I even start the seeds so that there is no flower in the same spot if it’s an annual plant- that helps me be able to grow my flowers sustainably and without chemicals which is important to me. Keeping the earth healthy is part of my plan. I grow all of my annuals & perennials from seeds placed in soil. I create seedlings that need care ;they need water and air /wind , they need nutrients and they need me to keep them safe from pests and diseases. 5 AM every single morning I am adjusting to what each variety needs. Once the seedlings are old enough it’s time to transplant & adjust to outside pressures! Heat - cold- wind- bugs- deer & disease are some of earths challenges! Hopefully they make it through to harvest, condition & arrange . With over 40 varieties of specialty cut flowers grown locally in New Hampshire that’s a lot of time and effort to get the beautiful blooms to my customers. If I were selling wildflowers I would go out side with a pair of snips forage for a bit of time & sell. One bouquets of foraged wildflowers might take an hour, where one bouquet of my cultivated flowers took anywhere between 50-70 hours per bunch of any one variety. Obviously those hours are not all at once but each & every day there’s something flower done here at the farm. So what’s in a word - wildflowers are wild & not tended, my flowers have a unique style that nay sometimes look like I’m trying to duplicate Mother Nature’s design, but I assure you I’ve tended them with love.
