North Carolina Flower Farms Offer Beautiful Bouquets, U-Pick Patches and Floral Workshops

When the butterflies, bees and colorful blooms of spring arrive, there’s no better way to celebrate the season than by visiting a North Carolina flower farm. Whether you want to pick your own bouquet or take a class on floral design, growers across the state are ready to welcome visitors eager to participate in hands-on activities at the farm.

Gold Hill Flower Co.

When Melissa and Drew Hammill moved from Charlotte to Drew’s hometown of Gold Hill in 2019, they bought a historic 1855 home in a former gold mining village with the dream of creating a self-serve flower stand on the property.

“I grew up inspired by my grandmother’s flower garden,” says Melissa, who works as a college adviser. “In 2018, I started reading books on cut flower production and experimenting. I wanted to try my hand at growing cut flowers on a small scale.”

Though both Melissa and Drew have full-time careers in education, they started Gold Hill Flower Co. as a small family business. Together with their 9-year-old daughter, Sawyer, they grow spring and summer annuals, including sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, celosia, snapdragons, statice, strawflowers and more. They also grow perennial bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, hydrangeas, peonies and lilies.

On weekends from July through September, guests can visit Gold Hill Flower Co. to fill a Mason jar with flowers from the U-pick flower patch.

“Workshops are another big component of our business,” Melissa says. “We offer DIY flower bars and classes on floral arranging, dried flower wreaths and holiday evergreen wreaths.”

As they prepare to enter their sixth season of flower farming in 2025, the Hammills are renovating an 1800s cabin that will serve as their future studio and workshop space. They’re hoping to offer even more flower arranging workshops in early summer.

Everlane Flower Co.

While working her desk job remotely during the pandemic in 2020, Elizabeth Cutler began growing plants from seeds and dreaming of moving back to the farm where she grew up in Washington, North Carolina.

“I watched a lot of gardening and flower farming content during that time,” she recalls, “and on a later trip home, I remember feeling so much peace being back on the farm.”

Cutler’s dream eventually grew into Everlane Flower Co. She started the business with her parents when they planted the first bulbs in the fall of 2020.

“We plowed an area and made some rows using old tobacco equipment,” she says. “Over the next several months, I started seeds, transplanted seedlings and moved back to my hometown.”

Everlane Flower Co. now offers a flower subscription service every spring. Come early summer, the farm opens to the public for pick-your-own flowers, workshops and vendor markets held in the flower field.

See more: How Sunflowers Helped One North Carolina Farmer Reach New Markets

“One of my favorite aspects of agritourism is getting to educate people who visit the farm about the flowers they’re picking,” Cutler says. “From flower varieties to best flower harvesting practices, we show examples to each picking party before letting them wander through the U-pick field.”

Cutler considers the field a space where the community can gather, which happens regularly when Everlane Flower Co. partners with local businesses to host events and activities. On market days, local vendors flood the flower field offering baked goods and handcrafted items.

“It’s great to see visitors leave with full arms and full hearts,” Cutler says. “To offer a space where someone can pick their own flowers, grab a coffee from a vendor and shop local goods is a great feeling.”

Wrenn’s Farm

About 30 minutes east of Raleigh in Zebulon, Christina and Austin Wrenn grow fresh flowers and strawberries at Wrenn’s Farm, a third-generation family farm that has been in business since 1967. The Wrenns began growing flowers on the farm in 2018, when Christina’s mother, a horticulture teacher, convinced her to grow a row of zinnias for her kitchen table.

“I ended up selling every single flower at the local farmers market, and that’s when I knew I was going to start growing flowers,” Christina says.

By 2020, Wrenn had set up greenhouses for early spring flowers and was selling them at the farm and the Nash County Farmers Market in Rocky Mount.

“My flower business boomed, and I’ve continued to expand,” she says. “I can’t keep track of how many varieties I grow, but I offer zinnias, sunflowers, floss flowers, coneflowers, dahlias, cosmos, amaranth, salvia, celosia, snapdragon, delphinium and more.”

Production season begins inside the greenhouse in March and runs through the first frost, usually between late October and mid-November. Throughout the season, Wrenn’s Farm offers a variety of floral workshops and classes for visitors. They also offer a bouquet bar at their farm store during high production times.

“We start with garden seeding workshops in spring and move on to flower cutting and arranging workshops throughout summer and fall,” Christina says. “Around the holidays, we offer bouquet-making in a pumpkin, dried flower wreath-making and Christmas wreath-making workshops.”

For Christina, growing flowers and welcoming visitors to the farm for picking and workshops has been a rewarding experience.

“I don’t see it as a job,” she says. “I see it as a lifestyle. Everyone buying flowers is doing it for a special reason, and it’s so nice to be able to be a part of it.”