One Saturday morning, I was explaining to my husband the future value of the 4,000 peony roots already planted on our farm. Not the value in the flowers they produce each spring which is what most think about, but the value in the roots that are multiplying underground with time. That's when he suggested, “Why don’t you just plant more of them on our property? Use the peonies as the investment you’ve been looking for.” (How thankful am I to have a husband who truly believes in this flower thing?)

I immediately grabbed a piece of scrap paper and started crunching the numbers, and what I found was eye-opening. Let’s break it down.

So, you want to start a flower farm! Your mind is probably buzzing with all the exciting possibilities—envisioning a beautiful barn for workshops, rows of perfect flower beds, a small peony field, and a section of perennials to complement your annuals. You’re ready to hit the ground running to turn that vision into your reality.

But wait! 🛑

Let’s pause for a moment and rethink the plan.

Have you ever had an empty space in your field and wondered what to plant? Many just plant what they enjoy growing the most or maybe what’s easiest to grow. But when you are running a cut flower business, you gotta look at it from a business perspective. What flower will provide the most yield. And when I say yield, I’m talking about profit.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen me refer to my peony field as “My husband’s retirement gig.” Let me explain why.

Once a peony is established—which takes years—a single plant can produce more than 50 blooms a year. Let’s be incredibly, uber conservative and say that you harvest 15 stems per plant each season and charge a low price of $4 per stem. This would mean each plant would bring in $60 in sales per year.

You’ve crafted a profit plan to guide your business towards profitability in the coming season. But what if the numbers aren't as encouraging as you hoped? Maybe your profit margins are slimmer than expected, or the overall profit just doesn't meet your goals. Don't worry! There are ways to turn this around.

If you were to ask me about my profit plan in year one, I would have told you it was to sell as many flowers as I could. THAT was my profit plan! Sound familiar? If so, you aren’t alone. As flower farmers, our passion for growing flowers and spreading joy is often the driving force behind our work, not the profits. But if you want to transform this passion into a sustainable business, you gotta have a plan.

Dahlia tubers. The blooms are the queen of the late-summer garden and the tubers are a critical income stream for flower farmers in the dead of winter when their field is dormant. But as you log hour after hour planting, digging, washing, dividing and storing, you start to wonder…is all the time and effort worth it?

Can we start breaking the unspoken rule we inherited from our grandparents and start talking about making money? I think it’s beyond time to expose the underground world of numbers, sales and profit and utilize this data to show what is possible.

Now that I got that off my chest, let’s get into what this article is all about - how I generated over $250k in sales in one year from my flower farm, Muddy Acres Flower Farm. And did I mention that I had just one (incredible) very part-time employee?