{"id":13883,"date":"2025-03-22T01:50:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T01:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/?p=13883"},"modified":"2025-03-22T01:55:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T01:55:48","slug":"the-evolution-of-a-philadelphia-flower-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/the-evolution-of-a-philadelphia-flower-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of a Philadelphia Flower Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Love<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Like so many, I started flower farming with just a basic plan in mind.  See if I could grow flowers in Philadelphia and if I could sell them.  That was pretty much it.  That first season, I never thought about what it would be like to do this work in 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here we are 15 years later.  The 2023 growing season has wrapped up and I am once again in my winter planning mode, considering the evolution of my Philadelphia flower farm.  At the start, I sold flowers at two farmers markets.  Then a handful of weddings came into the mix the second season.  The third year weddings really took hold so I left the farmers market and also added a flower CSA.  In the fourth year at this Philadelphia flower farm of mine, I began teaching workshops at the farm and added selling to two local independent grocery stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything trucked along nicely until a global pandemic sent us all reeling.  In 2020, this Philadelphia flower farm relied heavily on our amazing community to keep the farm financially stable after our main income stream \u2013 weddings and other events \u2013 was erased in a blink of the eye.  Our flower CSA \u2013 rebranded as our popular Porch Petals Prescription program \u2013 saved us that year.   In the fall we were able to add back open air workshops and we were humbled by how many friends of the farm came to those workshops when most of the world was still hunkered down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As that tumultuous year came to a close, I started thinking hard about the long-term future of my Philadelphia flower farm.  I was emotionally, physically, mentally and financially threadbare.  It wasn\u2019t just the pandemic.  I had been working so hard for over a decade to juggle four demanding sales channels along with running a complex flower farm.  I was stretched too thin.  It was time to simplify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so began an overdue longer-term plan for evolution for my Philadelphia flower farm.  We have let go of our grocery store bouquet program in 2020.  And 2023 was the last season for wedding flowers.   Lastly 2024 will be the final year for our flower CSA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus moving forward is two-fold: workshops at the farm and selling wholesale to other florists.  Narrowing down to these two offerings means that we can still engage with our wonderful local community through the workshops and also make sure that local weddings and other events still have beautiful locally-grown flowers in them, albeit not designed by my own hands.  A welcomed side effect would be for me to get a little more rest too, but I\u2019m not one to sit down for very long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evolution like this in a small business can sometimes be viewed as giving up on something that customers felt was wonderful and so it can feel like failure.  But let me assure you that it\u2019s not. Each of those many sales channels for my farm were highly successful in their own right.  I just need a change and I am confident this focus moving forward will ensure the long-term sustainability of my Philadelphia flower farm and actually lead to greater success and customer appreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Love<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like so many, I started flower farming with just a basic plan in mind.  See if I could grow flowers in Philadelphia and if I could sell them.  That was pretty much it.  That first season, I never thought about what it would be like to do this work in 15 years. And here we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-designing","category-weddings"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-1024x683.jpg",1024,683,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/april116-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"lovenfresh","author_link":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/author\/lovenfresh\/"},"uagb_comment_info":3,"uagb_excerpt":"Like so many, I started flower farming with just a basic plan in mind.  See if I could grow flowers in Philadelphia and if I could sell them.  That was pretty much it.  That first season, I never thought about what it would be like to do this work in 15 years. And here we…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13883"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13889,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883\/revisions\/13889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}