A Season of Flowers at PepperHarrow

September might just be one of our favorite months on the flower farm.

The fields have that slightly wild, overflowing look that only comes at the end of a long growing season. The dahlias are showing off, the celosia is glowing in all sorts of incredible colors, and our bouquets seem to get richer and moodier as we slowly make our way toward fall.

This week, we were putting together bouquets for our Flower Membership folks, and looking across the worktable at all those flowers got us thinking about just how much a membership at PepperHarrow has changed over the years.

What started as a pretty simple way to share flowers from the farm has grown into several different ways to experience a season here with us.

That's really what these memberships are about: experiencing and savoring the season.

A Bouquet That Changes With the Farm

Our Pre-Made Bouquet Share is probably the most traditional way to enjoy a PepperHarrow growing season.

Throughout the season, we design bouquets using whatever is looking especially beautiful in the fields at that moment. No two pickups are exactly alike because no two weeks on the farm are exactly alike.

Early bouquets might be filled with some of our favorite cool-season flowers. As summer settles in, zinnias, cosmos, celosia and other heat-loving flowers begin to take over. And by late summer and September, the bouquets become big, lush celebrations of dahlias and all those wonderful fall colors we've been waiting months to see.

For our members, it's a little snapshot of PepperHarrow to bring home and enjoy.

For us, it's one of our favorite creative exercises, walking through the fields and deciding what combination of colors, textures and flowers best tells the story of the farm that week.

Or Come Pick the Flowers Yourself

Some people would rather choose their own adventure.

That's why we created our Cut Your Own Bouquet Membership.

Instead of picking up a bouquet we've designed, these members get to head into the flower fields and create something completely their own. We provide the jar and snips, and the fields provide the inspiration.

There's something different about walking the rows yourself.

You start noticing flowers you might have walked right past before. You find a dahlia you've never seen. You build an entire bouquet around one strange little celosia. You change your mind about your color palette halfway through because you spotted something beautiful three rows over.

The finished bouquet is wonderful, of course, but we've learned that the experience of cutting it is often just as important.

Sometimes the Farm Comes Home With You

Not every PepperHarrow membership is about cut flowers. Our different Plant Share memberships give gardeners a chance to take some of what we grow here and bring it into their own gardens.

Our Spring Cutting Garden Plant Share is designed to give members a head start on a beautiful cutting garden at home with plants we've already carefully started and grown. Instead of buying a random assortment of plants and hoping they work well together, members receive varieties selected with cutting and bouquet-making in mind.

And then there are the lisianthus. If you've ever tried growing lisianthus from seed, you probably understand why our Lisianthus Plant Share has become such a fun offering. We do the painfully slow part for you, and you get healthy young plants ready to go into your garden.

We grow thousands of lisianthus here at PepperHarrow every year, and being able to share some of those plants with other flower lovers has become another way for us to extend the farm beyond our own fields.

Of course, we can't talk about memberships at PepperHarrow without talking about our lavender plant share. Lavender has become such an important part of our farm and our story. What began as another crop has grown into acres of lavender, thousands of plants, our Lavender Festival, culinary experiences, distillation, handcrafted products and some of the most beautiful weeks of the entire year here.

We love to share the lavender plants that we grow here, so our members can experience a little bit of the farm’s magic at home.

And Then There's BLOOM!

Over the years, we kept hearing from people who wanted something more.

They didn't necessarily want to visit PepperHarrow once or twice. They wanted to feel like the farm was their placethroughout the season.

That's what inspired our BLOOM Membership.

BLOOM is our most immersive way to experience PepperHarrow. Members receive special access to the farm throughout the growing season, including opportunities to cut flowers each Saturday, enjoy a monthly designed bouquet, attend some of our signature flower and lavender events, receive discounts on classes and products, and enjoy other special perks throughout the year.

But our favorite part of BLOOM isn't really any single benefit. It's seeing familiar faces again and again. It's watching someone arrive in May when the farm looks one way, return during lavender season when everything has completely transformed, and then come back again in September when the dahlias are towering over us.

You get to watch the farm become the farm and our extended family.

Being a Part of a Flower Farm

One of the things we've learned after 15 years of growing flowers is that a farm teaches you to appreciate seasons.

Nothing is available all the time.

Peonies arrive and disappear. Lavender blooms for a few magical weeks. Zinnias love the heat. Dahlias make us wait nearly the entire summer before finally stealing the show.

Instead of buying flowers once, you get to watch the season unfold. You begin recognizing what's blooming. You discover varieties you didn't know existed. You see how dramatically the farm can change from one visit to the next and somewhere along the way, you become a little more connected to where your flowers actually come from.

As we made these big September bouquets for our members this week, we couldn't help but think about all the flowers that came before them this year, and how quickly another beautiful growing season has passed.

But we're also already dreaming about what we'll plant next year and we hope you'll come experience a season of flowers with us.

XX Jenn and Adam