Erica Penn
Fleur Paws Flower Farm
In 2021, I left my full-time job teaching and started farming full-time on our new property in TN. I do not come from a farming family and my interest in growing started when we bought our first house; there were some sad resident rose bushes that I was determined to revive. Life being unpredictable, we had the chance to move to London, and I spent much of the seven years there taking horticulture courses, eventually ended up graduating from the English School of Garden Design. I worked briefly as a designer in London before we returned to the US.
My discovery of dahlias marked the beginning of my dahlia obsession and farm career. I got my start in specialty cut flower farming in Philadelphia after having taken the Floret Workshop in 2018. I scaled up my dahlia field and began selling to local designers and then into the Philly market through a wonderful wholesaler who focused on local flowers.
Our new farm is just over 10 acre. Prior to planting, I surveyed and plotted out the overall layout of the farm and am quickly transitioning a once weedy cow pasture into a full-fledged flower farm. My focus remains on dahlias: my goal is to be the largest supplier of quality dahlias to the wholesale market in Nashville.
Show Notes
You should always put yourself in the shoes of the person who’s buying your flowers.
Do the best you can with the time that you have.
Communicate with your customers to see how and where the flowers are going to be used .
It’s important fo follow a lot of flower designers on social media to see how your flowers could fit in with their work and designs.
Be sure to grow colors of flowers that are in line with your customers needs. This will help grow your business and brand.
Here in Tennessee, she used a 50% shade cloth over her dahlias to help with the heat and the suns intensity.
When considering varieties of dahlias to grow it’s more important to consider stems per plant produced than growing the biggest dinner plate varieties.
Before you choose a fertilizer plan make sure that you do soil testing in more than one place. Pick several locations, you might be surprised.
You might consider staggering your planting of your dahlias if you have enough tubers and space. It might help you in supplying more consistency and quality of blooms.
