By Chris Aldridge
Kentucky Ag News

Carly Reed never planned on going into the flower business.

“It sort of evolved,” said Reed, owner of In Bloom Flower Farm near Georgetown. “I’ve just loved gardening for a long time, and I wanted to try growing flowers from seeds at home.

“Once you have the flowers, you have to do something with them, so I’d cut them and give them as gifts to my friends. Then those friends asked me to make an arrangement for them to give to someone else. They said, ‘We’ll pay you for it.’ I thought, ‘This will support my habit!’”

Reed, a native of Paris, Ky., who lives in Lexington, started selling flowers in 2018 after she and her husband bought a 15-acre property in Scott County that was the former home to a plant nursery that had become neglected. Only a fraction of the land – which includes woods, a small pond, and the family’s vegetable garden – is used to grow flowers.

Flowers purchased for weddings make up most of the farm’s sales.

“May is when we do most of our business, which is the same month as Mother’s Day,” Reed said. “People are really itching for flowers in the spring.

“In the summer, business dies down. Weddings aren’t as popular in July and August. Then things pick back up in September and October when our dahlias are blooming.”

Marketing is done completely through word of mouth by satisfied customers.

“People come to us, and say, ‘You did my cousin’s wedding’ or something like that,” Reed said. “Our website (www.inbloomcutflowers.com) is easily found if a bride types in ‘Kentucky cut wedding flowers’ in a Google search.”

While word-of-mouth got the business started, a pandemic in the business’ third year almost stopped them. The COVID pandemic canceled a number of weddings scheduled in 2020.

“We had many, many weddings on the books,” Reed said. “That came to a screeching halt, so we had to figure out how to sell all the flowers we had for the weddings.

“So we started delivering bouquets to Georgetown and Lexington, and it was a huge hit. People (homebound during the pandemic) wanted flowers. People couldn’t see each other, so they wanted to send each other flowers.”

Home delivery, including weekly subscription bouquets, has remained a staple of the business even after the pandemic.

“Customers we deliver to regularly continue to order year after year,” Reed said. “Our subscription bouquets are delivered every week to your doorstep. You set the vase or Mason jar (that it originally came in) back out on your doorstep, and we fill it up. We do it really early in the morning. We don’t like to do it in the afternoon when the heat is really hard on the flowers.”

In Bloom Farm also sells potted flowers and bulbs so customers can raise their own bouquets.

“We grow anything from grasses to any type of bulb,” Reed said. “Right now, we have all the summer flowers. In the spring, our biggest crops are anemone (commonly called windflowers) and ranunculus (such as buttercups, spearworts, and water crowfoots). We sell the bulbs for them too.”

The farm doesn’t have a flower store, preferring to advertise its wares online. But it does have an event space available for rent.

“Garden clubs can meet there and take a tour,” Reed said. “We can host baby showers and birthday parties where guests can make their own arrangements.”

The farm hosted a pop-up flower shop in June. Before the pandemic, it hosted several workshops, which “we’re getting back into doing,” Reed said.

“We’re going to start in the fall doing more garden–to-vase workshops, where people can watch us harvest flowers and make their own arrangements,” she added.

Another plan is to make the farm’s floral landscape more picturesque “so it can be used for photos – senior portraits, engagement photos, things like that,” Reed said. “So we’re continuing to improve the property and fill it with perennials.”

Visit the farm’s website, www.inbloomcutflowers.com, for more information on workshops, flower availabilities, home deliveries, and more.