Eight Generations of Flower Farming Led to Carolina Flowers

Hello! I’m Emily, and I started Carolina Flowers with a shovel in an old tobacco field in 2016. Since then, we’ve grown to a staff of 14 people growing and designing blooms year round. We specialize in wedding flowers and daily deliveries. We grow flowers year-round on our 5-acre flower farm, and we're even beginning to harvest year-round with hydroponic flowers like these Deejay Parrot tulips. During January when time feels slower, and we're tucked inside where it's cozy, I like to tell you our story.

Back in 2016, when I started Carolina Flowers, I was working as a journalist. I’d written for most of the publications in Asheville, and I’d also done a journalism stint in the Caribbean, written a few blurbs for the Associated Press and surveyed the landscape of journalism, generally. I was not impressed. It’s a punishing industry, and to make a liveable salary, you have to bounce around all over the country. I wanted roots. I knew journalism wasn’t for me.

I considered a lot of other career options. My family still makes fun of my idea for a street cart that served pancakes. (Why would anyone want to eat pancakes on the street?) I thought about becoming a cobbler, but have you ever read a fairytale? No cobblers are getting ahead in life — unless they have help from magic elves. I don’t know any magic elves. I considered becoming an electrician — that probably would have been the “smart” choice. I even shadowed a class at AB-Tech to see if I might like getting the license.

One day, I was working in my garden, and I realized. Flower farming. My grandfather grew up on our family’s flower farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. All my life I had heard stories of the farm. I had grown and loved plants, but I had never put the pieces together! I could be a flower farmer too!

Here’s a photo of my great grandparents in their carnation greenhouse in Lancaster. My cousin Grace, who grew up on this property, sent me this photo. She thinks it was taken on their wedding day, sometime in the mid-1910s.

The family farm specialized in carnations, a crop that benefits from indoor growing space and some supplemental heating. My grandpa, Harry, would always tell me about planting the starts out in the field, topping them using a specialized cart that allowed the growers to float over the row. Eventually, the seedlings would get transplanted to the greenhouse, where they needed special supports to support their slender stems. You can see these in the photo above.

My grandparents didn’t remain on the farm. They were conservative Mennonites, so when my grandpa got drafted during the Korean War, they served as conscientious objectors, working on a leper colony in Vietnam. Oh yes, there’s a story there, but the short version is: After seeing so much of the world, they couldn’t return to the family farm. They landed in Atlanta, where I grew up, and got involved with the Civil Rights Movement. My grandpa was a professor at Spelman College. My grandma was an artist who also served on city council and had a nonprofit to help the children of impoverished mill workers. The flower farm was just one part of their legacy. You can see why it took me a few years of adulthood to rediscover it.

Here I am with Grandpa Harry in the photo above. I think I’m three years old? It’s the early ‘90s. We’re in the garden. I have the most horrible bangs, which my mom insisted on cutting herself. You can take Mennonites off the farm, but you can’t take the homespun hairstyles, I guess.

My grandpa died right around the time I was starting Carolina Flowers. I had rented the land and planted our first tulip crop, and I told him about my plans. At his funeral, I was working on business cards. My mom’s cousin Grace came for the funeral. My grandpa was her favorite uncle. I hadn’t seen her since I was a kid, but we majorly clicked. She grew up on the family farm and knew lots about flower farming. Eventually, she moved to Asheville to help me get my start! I consider our wonderful relationship a parting gift from my grandpa. I am so grateful for the support from Grace and Harry and many of the other Lefevers.

Here’s Grace, in the photo above. We’re watering in lisianthus plugs by hand. I think it’s April 2018 – the leaves haven’t come out yet.

Looking back on my life before the farm, I see how I thought of myself as a modern person without much of a family past. I see now how wrong I was! Here I am crying at my desk. Some things are in your blood. Growing flowers is in mine. Business is in mine (Mennonites are notoriously adroit business people). My intensity of interest, sometimes myopic, sometimes intimidating — also genetic.

There are other things that make me who I am that have nothing to do with flowers, of course. I’ve spent the last few years carefully defining the boundaries between my identity and the business. However, I’m so grateful for the rich legacy of my family and my amazing friendship with Grace. She’s back in Pennsylvania these days, but she still comes down to help me from time to time. If you took our November 24 wreath workshop, you got to meet her!

Thanks for taking the time to read about my family. Stay tuned throughout the month of January. I’ll have more stories from the business and also big announcements about the years ahead!