ABOUT
Southern Flora Farms is a four season flower farm nestled among the rolling hills of Tennessee. We are dedicated to providing our community with the freshest, sustainably grown flowers, year-round.
Together with our farm crew, we cultivate hundreds of thousands of blooms from January through November from our one acre garden.
PHILOSOPHY
Our call to tend the Earth stems from a deep responsibility that we feel towards the next generation. By using farming for good, we aim to build community through our beautiful, farm fresh specialty cut flowers that respects the land, community, and our farm crew.
PRACTICE
We never use any chemical pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, or synthetic fertilizers. We feed our crops by providing an abundance of organic matter such as compost, straw, and worm castings. We amend our soil occasionally by adding minerals such as limestone, blood meal, bone meal, and chicken manure.
We are in the process of converting the farm into a regenerative and sustainable ecosystem through the grazing of livestock and cultivation of crops. Stay tuned to see how we grow over the years!
OUR STORY
I can still remember the first time that I saw a bouquet of locally grown flowers. I was in college working at a coffee shop in Boone, North Carolina, where a co-worker helped part-time at the local farmers market. She was coming in to work her shift after the market and brought a large, overflowing vase of the most incredible flowers and foliage I had ever seen. I was so intrigued by the diversity and naturalness of the bouquet that I could only imagine how wonderful the garden must be, and I wanted to be a part of it.
The following summer I worked for the same farmer, helping tend to her vegetable and flower garden, and making bouquets on demand at the market each Saturday. I learned as much as I could about flower varieties, their names, their seasonality, and how to create a hand wrapped bouquet. I still remember standing on the ridge over her gardens thinking to myself "I could do this."
It wasn't shortly after my time working on the farm, I met Will. Will had his own experience working on farms throughout college. Once we realized we wanted to spend forever together, his passion for sustainability paired nicely with my business degree and we set out to start a farm business of our own. Then the pieces started to fall in place. We had a farm lease opportunity become available to us in Will's hometown, and so our farm journey began.
The first year we planted everything - vegetables and flowers alike. We dreamed of living slowly, canning vegetables, and picking flowers and that we did, but it did not cover the cost of running a farm. After two years of trial and error, we decided to focus our efforts on mastering one production system, rather than two. Our third year we cut the vegetable garden down by 75%, growing just what our family needed, and filled our gardens with flowers. Now in our fifth year you can find us at the local farmers market 12 months out of the year, and grocery stores across middle-Tennessee during our main growing season. We’ve expanded our offerings to include tulips throughout the dead of winter, unique and heirloom flowers often found in antique or cottage gardens throughout the spring, summer, and fall, and fresh evergreen wreaths for the winter holiday season.
FIND OUR FLOWERS
FRANKLIN, TN
Franklin Farmers Market // every Saturday January-November (& evergreen wreaths in December!)
230 Franklin Road
NASHVILLE, TN
The Turnip Truck - Charlotte Ave, East Nashville, & the Gulch // Thursday-Sunday May-October
5001 Charlotte Avenue // 701 Woodland Street // 321 12th Avenue South
MANCHESTER, TN
Harvest Local Foods // Thursday-Sunday May-October
101 N Irwin Street
Farm Pick Up // By appointment only
287 Matlock Road
