Flowers can bring beauty, healing and economic opportunity. But what does it take to build a livelihood around flowers? In this episode, I’m joined by Debra Prinzing, the founder of the Slow Flowers Society and co-author of “The Flower Farmers,” and Xenia D’Ambrosi, a flower farmer and the founder of Sweet Earth Co. Together, they share their personal journeys into flower farming and their insights and observations on the changing landscape of floriculture.
In “The Flower Farmers,” Debra and co-author Robin Avni share the stories of 29 North American flower farmers — Xenia is among them — and highlight the deeply personal paths that lead people into this unique livelihood. Debra says the creative lifestyle of flower farming is a modern expression of the desire to connect with nature, get back to the land, and sustain an authentic and sustainable livelihood.
Debra Prinzing is the founder of the Slow Flowers Society and co-author of “The Flower Farmers.” She also hosts the “Slow Flowers” podcast.
Debra is a Seattle-based writer, speaker and leading advocate for local and domestic flowers. Through her many Slow Flowers-branded projects, she has convened a national conversation among consumers and professionals to encourage them to make conscious choices about their floral purchases. She has authored many books, such as “Where We Bloom: Thirty-Seven Intimate, Inventive and Artistic Studio Spaces Where Floral Passions Find a Place to Blossom” and “The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers.” She also hosts the long-running podcast “Slow Flowers” and has also been a contributing editor to Country Gardens magazine.
Xenia’s Sweet Earth Co. is based at her and husband Adrian’s idyllic 1800 farmhouse property in historic Pound Ridge, New York. Sweet Earth Co. specializes in growing specialty cut flowers and herbs, and in garden and floral design and installations.
Xenia D’Ambrosi is a flower farmer and the founder of Sweet Earth Co. in Pound Ridge, New York.
Photo by Jordan Veitinger
Xenia’s Journey to Flower Farming
Xenia is originally from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After college and grad school, she ended up working in finance in corporate America.
“It got to be a lot stress-wise, and it took a toll on my health, and I was diagnosed with cancer,” she shares. That was in January 2010. “And at that point, I decided to leave the corporate world and focus on my health. And while my family to some extent did have some agricultural past, it was not in the last couple of generations. So as I started to heal myself, mostly through herbs to fortify my immune system, I started growing my own food, and especially growing my own herbs. And I think at that point, I found not only healing, but joy and inspiration, and it became a passion. And that was my bridge into flowers.”
She went back to school and got certified at the New York Botanical Gardens. She started out with edible landscapes and from there grew into regenerative full-blown landscapes. “And then eco-gardens became a focus and kind of a niche for me, and in particular, cutting gardens.”
She started Sweet Earth Co. in 2012.
Her eco-gardens aim to minimize lawn and incorporate pollinator gardens, native gardens, meadows, flower gardens, cutting gardens and combinations of vegetable and flower gardens.
Whatever the space is, no matter the size — from a patio fire escape to acres of backyard — her goal is to teach, encourage and inspire others to improve that land and make it productive and biodiverse. “Make it work for you and for everyone, including the environment and habitat.”
She continues to grow herbs both for bouquets and culinary purposes as well as for teas.
Xenia wholesales flowers to designers and also offers a flower CSA — an acronym that stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Her CSA subscribers visit weekly to pick up their bouquets. She also offers free flowers to seniors and community groups. She designs and installs gardens, and also designs florals for weddings and events. She teaches with on-farm events and design, gardening and tea workshops.
Xenia dries herbs for tea and other uses.
Photo Courtesy of Debra Prinzing
The Slow Flowers Movement
Xenia and Debra have long been involved in the Slower Flowers movement.
“We really saw a spike during COVID where there was a threat to the supply chain in the floral industry,” Debra recalls. She says that awoke consumers to the questions: Who grows my flowers? Where are they grown? What methods are used?
Consumers became interested in supporting local floral agriculture, supporting local farmers and keeping those resources in their community. “All of a sudden, this is really in the zeitgeist and it’s really exploded,” she says.
According to the USDA’s 2023 Floriculture Survey, the number of producers totaled 10,216 in 2023 compared to 8,949 in 2022. Debra says there is consistent growth in the number of farms reporting that some or all of their acreage is devoted to cut flowers.
“We’re talking about people like Xenia who are growing on one acre, perhaps up to a half-million-dollar farm. So USDA is defining ‘small farm’ in a different way than maybe we are,” Debra says.
The growth is a reversal in a trend. The number of floriculture businesses had previously been dwindling in the United States.
“The foundation of the Slow Flower movement is that floriculture had such a large presence in our economy back in the ’60s, ’70s. And it wasn’t until the ’80s where we really saw that flip on its head, through politics and policies and all of that.”
The United States, at one point, was producing 70-80% of its cut flowers domestically. Now, 70-80% of the cut flowers sold in the United States are imported.
Xenia says the Slow Flowers movement, like the Slow Food movement, emphasizes local. “Not only putting dollars behind supporting local farmers, but also taking it one step further: Well, how local? Well as local as my backyard.”
The movement toward more domestic production is steady, but small.
“Mass market flowers are just dominant in the U.S.,” Debra says. “Fifty percent of the cut flowers sold in the U.S. or purchased in the U.S. are purchased at the grocery store level. So that big box presence is dominant, and that we didn’t see 30, 40 years ago. It’s just the way consumers spend their money.”
She says the interest in local is now spreading to big wholesalers who are realizing they would benefit from buying direct from a local farmer or a regional farmer.
“This subset that we are really excited about is when sustainability and seasonality become like a desirable beauty profile,” Debra says. “Like I always say, it’s a better way to beautiful. We’re selling people on the beauty. We’re not … scolding them for buying imports. It’s a shift, and I think we can celebrate it, but I think there’s lots more to do and lots more to talk about.
Xenia says when you put a commercial or an imported flower of the same variety next to a local one in season, the difference is obvious — and it sells itself.
“I always say to our members, don’t get stuck on the price competition,” Debra says.
Labor issues and environmental issues are much better regulated in North America than maybe they are in a country that’s exporting to the United States, she noted.
To overcome price differences, she says to tell the story of the flower farmer and connect to, perhaps, someone’s childhood memory of grandma’s garden or the flowers they carried in their bridal bouquet. “These emotional conversations all of a sudden ignite people’s imagination, and that’s what these stories in the book are all about,” she says.
“Whenever we can put the face of the farmer on that flower, it does heighten people’s appreciation for the fact that there’s a story behind that flower and who grew it. Connecting consumers with local flowers is sort of my mission and passion. And it really is done through storytelling.”
The Slow Flowers movement takes the inspiration for its name from the Slow Food movement. Both movements emphasize quality, local products.
Photo by Jordan Veitinger
“The Flower Farmers” Book
When Debra and Robin set out to write “The Flower Farmers,” they knew they had to narrow down a field of thousands of flower farmers. They aimed for geographic diversity, generational diversity and ethnic representation to capture a snapshot of North America.
“One thing that we really did notice is there are some prevailing profiles or personas of the types of people who are drawn to dive into flower farming,” Debra says.
“When I used to be a contributing editor to Country Gardens Magazine, every single issue there was a profile of a flower farmer. Not because people who read it wanted to be farmers, but they wanted access to that sort of flower farming adjacent lifestyle,” she added.
Even though they discovered many recurring themes in the reasons people become flower farmers, they also found there are many paths that take people to flower farming.
“Wellness and healing is definitely one path, as Xenia illustrated in her very personal story,” Debra says. “We have the corporate escapee, which she also is, but in the book, there are people who’ve left Wall Street, who’ve left high-profile government jobs, professional jobs, just to maybe follow a lifelong love of the earth.”
The book includes an architect, a fine art appraiser, and people who didn’t realize when they were teens that professional horticulture is an option they could pursue.
There are also the farmers who were already working as floral designers. When they couldn’t source the kinds of flowers they wanted in the quantities they needed, they began farming their own.
Debra says these wonderful stories show that this can be a viable industry. Though she pointed out it’s not all posing for photos with an arm basket full of fresh cut blooms.
“The glamour is maybe on Pinterest or Instagram, but the grit is behind the scenes,” she says. “But people are willing to talk about that and be very honest about the highs and lows.”
Xenia adds that what keeps them going is the magic of growing something and the smile you put on somebody’s face when you hand them a bouquet of flowers.
“The Flower Farmers: Inspiration & Advice from Expert Growers” by Debra Prinzing and Robin Avni
Gardening Interest Is Growing
“There are maybe only a dozen or so — under 20 for sure — horticulture programs at the college level in the U.S. that have floral culture as a track,” Debra noted. “It’s very small, and it has shrunk.”
However, she adds that there is a renaissance going on. She says the “starter drug” for gardening is probably a tomato, beautiful lettuce greens or edible herbs.
And during COVID, 20 million new people picked up the trowel and started gardening.
“We saw the surveys, and the interesting thing is that it included more men than ever and more younger people than ever,” she says. “So the research about the physical and mental health benefits of just growing, tending to plants, has propelled more people to pursue this.’
For people new to growing flowers specifically, she likes to use the term “emerging flower farmers” rather than “young flower farmers,” because many people come to growing flowers later in life.
“What’s great is that we’re teaching each other, with organizations like the Slow Flowers, like the American Society of Cut Flower Growers, with courses like the one I’ve developed and other flower farmers and their courses, our Facebook groups — all of that,” Xenia says. “We reach out where we like to help each other. We like to support, encourage, and help each other through challenges or just questions. So I think that rising tide lifts all boats. And if we work on this together, we can really make more progress on moving the needle for local product and local farms.”
Lavender is a herb that makes a great addition to a bouquet.
Photo by Jordan Veitinger
Resilience and Innovation
Price competition and difficulty in finding affordable, suitable land are only two of the challenges flower farmers face.
The price of seed and bulbs is also becoming more of a hurdle, Xenia points out.
“We are a resilient group, and so we are finding ways to save seed, or to barter and trade,” she says. “So I think that it’s a matter of just finding the workarounds.”
Debra says flower farmers are innovating in secondary revenue channels.
“People are saving seeds, and a lot of small-scale flower farmers have their own dahlia programs for tubers,” she says. “They’re selling tulips and ranunculus that they’ve vetted to the home gardeners who can buy on a small scale. These growers also all tend to create collectives in regions, either formally or informally, where they’re maybe bundling their purchases to meet the minimums.”
Flower farmers can sell into a collective, or buy from it when they have a big event.
“I’m also seeing a lot of innovation in floral tourism,” Debra adds. “… where these are other ways that farmers can make a living from their land, not just from flowers, but they can have farm-to-table dinners, or they can rent their farm out for weddings, which is not for the faint of heart, but people do it, and there’s money to be had there.”
She recently visited an Iowa farm that has a Saturday morning yoga program where the city folk are invited to come out to the farm and take a yoga class among the flowers.
“It’s the value added,” Xenia says. “It’s an edge we have on the imports. In addition to seasonal, beautiful flowers, we have that direct connection to the farm, and people love coming to the farm to not only pick up their flowers, but for any on-farm events, or tours and collaborations.”
Eco-tourism can also include farm stays, she adds.
“In the end, a flower is a commodity,” Debra says. “We’re trying to elevate local flowers to the couture, highly specialized, luxury level, so that they’re valued as more than a commodity.”
Flower breeding is another way flower farmers are innovating.
“The small-scale flower farmer has become a flower breeder,” Debra says. “And so many people are doing their own crosses and selections and trying to introduce new varieties of annuals — zinnias and celosia and cosmos. All those old-fashioned favorites are now getting pushed to see how far they go, as in the breeding. What that does then is allow the flower farmer to have another stream of revenue where they’re selling maybe a selection that no one else has.”
It’s also happening with perennials and woody ornamentals as well as dahlias.
Tours and other events that welcome guests onto flower farms help flower farmers supplement their income.
Photo Courtesy of Debra Prinzing
Why Consumers Buy Local Flowers
In partnership with the National Gardening Association’s National Gardening Survey, for the past three years Debra has asked consumers why they buy local flowers. The top-ranked reasons are “keeping my flowers local, “keeping agricultural jobs in my community” and “reducing the carbon footprint.”
Flower Farmers Need Only a Small Space to Get Started
A 3-by-10-foot space will be enough to produce a bouquet a week, from spring through fall, with seasonal focal flowers, filler and greenery, according to Xenia.
To move up from a friends and family garden to a business, it will take more precise crop planning and tracking.
Consumers cite “supporting local farmers” as a top reason for buying locally grown bouquets.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Xenia D’Ambrosi & Debra Prinzing on flower farmers. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
Are you a flower farmer, at any scale? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 214: The National Gardening Association’s 2021 Survey Findings: What Gardeners Think
Episode 269: The Ultimate Guide to Flower Growing, With Jenny Rose Carey
Episode 274: Growing Cool-Season Annuals for Earlier Color and Hardier Plants
Episode 315: Succession Planting with Flowers
Episode 351: The Cut Flower Handbook, with Lisa Mason Ziegler
Episode 355: Growing Flowers, Seeds and a Business, with Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm
Episode 358: How a Volunteer Sunflower Turned a Flower Farmer into a Seed Breeder
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Slow Flowers Society on Facebook
Slow Flower Society on Instagram | @slowflowerssociety
Bloom Imprint on Instagram | @bloom.imprint
Xenia D’Ambrosi on Instagram | @SweetEarthCo
Sweet Earth Co. Eco-Friendly Earth Audit
Sweet Earth Co. Eco-Friendly Cutting Garden course –
“The Flower Farmers: Inspiration & Advice from Expert Growers” by Debra Prinzing and Robin Avni
“The Eco-Friendly Flower Garden Planner & Journal” by Xenia D’Ambrosi
“Where We Bloom: Thirty-Seven Intimate, Inventive and Artistic Studio Spaces Where Floral Passions Find a Place to Blossom” by Debra Prinzing
“The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers” by Debra Prinzing
“Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow and Farm” by Debra Prinzing
“Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways” by Debra Prinzing
“The Abundant Garden” by Barbara J. Denk and Debra Prinzing
Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you make a purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Proven Winners ColorChoice, and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
