When love is in bloom, you want the flowers to match the occasion and Young Family Flower Farm has branched out its flower-growing business to include creating arrangements for a bride’s special day.

Samantha Young said she has always been drawn to creativity and beauty, so it’s not surprising that when she and her husband Matthew got into farming that she would be drawn to growing flowers and selling them as cut flowers and as arrangements.

The couple first began growing vegetables on their Vinemont farm, selling them through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group.

It was her husband who suggested adding flowers into the growing mix, said Samantha. “Matt told me, ‘why don’t you just throw in some flowers for your CSA to make the boxes look pretty?’”

She grew sunflowers, zinnas and celosias to add color to the produce boxes, and discovered a new love. “I fell in love with the flowers more than I did the food items,” she said.

At the end of season, she and Matt had a debriefing and she told him she really wanted to concentrate on growing flowers, although the couple still grows fruits and vegetables.

Samantha found inspiration through a television show. Erin Benzakein, who is featured on Joanna and Chip Gaines’ Magnolia Network, is a farmer-florist who showed Samantha a way to combine her love of growing with her creative side. “I’m building my business as a farmer-florist, growing the flowers and then using them for weddings and events,” said Samantha.

Over the winter, she took Benzakein’s six-week course on being a farmer-florist and Lisa Mason Ziegler’s course on the same subject. “As I was taking these classes, I would really fall in love with it more and more,” she said.

As her business grew, so has her business plan. She is focused on providing bouquets that are sold at Kavarna, selling flowers at the Saturday Festhalle Farmer’s Market and providing flowers for weddings.

“I’ve always loved making things pretty,” said Samantha. “When you’re farming flowers they’re pretty in the field, but you never get to see the final product. Even in market bouquets, they look very different when they are taken out of that package, put in a vase and put on someone’s table. We don’t necessarily get to see where they land, so for me it’s exciting and delighting to see the flowers go from our field to the end point.”

For 2022, they are only doing one wedding a month for the wedding season from May-October. “I’m still learning and growing as a designer,” she explained. “I would rather have five really incredible weddings that I can give quite a lot of time to than do more than that and feel stressed. When you’re dealing with weddings, you’re dealing with one of the biggest days of people’s lives and it requires thought and energy, and you have to put your heart into it.”

She’s been working with Cullman Florist, which hired her as an off-season designer, and learning more about the craft. “They are incredible teachers and they’re teaching me so much about design and how to do that better,” she said. “That’s been such a blessing to me and it’s really going to help me come wedding season to up my game. Flowers are really pretty no matter what, but you do have to know what you’re doing.”

Working with Cullman Florist — and knowing other flower growers in the state — also helps her with sourcing any flowers that she may not grow herself.

“What’s awesome about farmers being friends with florists is if you can’t get a particular thing that you need for that wedding — it’s not doing well in the field or the color isn’t quite right — I can always reach out to my friends at Cullman Florist and say, ‘hey, I need this particular flower in this color’ and they can help me. They have been such a blessing.”

For weddings, Young Family Flower Farm offers a la carte orders — so brides can select only a few arrangements — or full service. Samantha said if they don’t have a particular color or type of flower the bride is looking for, Young Family Flower Farm works with other area growers to get the flowers needed.

Not only are they supporting local businesses, using local flowers cuts down on the costs. “By growing the flowers, I’m not buying those flowers in and factoring that into the cost of their wedding,” said Samantha.

She said the week of the bride’s wedding, she’ll often invite them out to the field to see what’s growing. “It lets them see what’s going on in the field and if there is anything sticking out to them that maybe wasn’t on the original idea list and then we just go from there.”

They also end up with flowers that will last longer. “We harvest specifically for their wedding,” she said. More than 80% of flowers sold in the United States come from outside the U.S., so they spend several days in transit.

“When you purchase from us, they were cut yesterday,” said Samantha. “You’re getting six extra days from your bouquets.”

She and her husband have big plans for the future. “Our dream to be the largest producer of speciality cut flowers in the Southeast,” she said. “Anybody that needs speciality cut flowers, we want to be their person.”