From Farm to Flowers
Farm to plate, forest to furniture, sun to cheese… Shelburne Farms is always helping visitors trace the path from the land to our everyday lives.
Now we have Farm to Flowers!
Every season, our Market Garden team collaborates with florists Abby Todia and Amy Raymond to grow and create floral magic at the Inn — beautiful and joyful arrangements rooted in this farm.
Abby and Amy, just like our chefs, meet every winter with the Market Garden team Josh Carter and Rachel Kessler to develop a list of what to grow for the coming season. “We discuss what worked or didn’t and anything new we might want to try,” explains Abby. Amy, who owns a cut-flower business Pear & Peony Farm, often has suggestions from her farm to augment the list.
“We have to be thoughtful in the planning,” says Josh, “because a bouquet is not just showy flowers, but also greenery, and usually a filler. And with the showy flowers, a diversity of shapes and colors is important. So we make sure that we are looking at that.”
Throughout the growing season, the Market Garden team delivers cut flowers and greens to the Inn every Tuesday and Friday, ready for arranging. Abby and Amy (self-dubbed “The A-Team”) fashion more than 50 bouquets for the Inn, ranging from 40 bud vases for the bedrooms and dining tables, to grander arrangements in the public rooms. Additional flowers are distributed to the cottages.
“We feel like kids sometimes when we see an old favorite that's finally come into season,” says Abby. Amy remembers a particular flower, Black majestic fountain grass (Pennisetum). “It's a very striking, dark wine flower,” she explains. “We’d asked for ‘more drama’ so the Market Garden grew it this year, but then Abby and I forgot about it. When it came in, we were like kids on Christmas morning. We were so excited to work with it.”
They also are always on the lookout for items from nature, from this farm. This suits the land-based aesthetic (“We lean into our surroundings and try to make our arrangements feel like they fit with the space and the working farm” says Abby), and often helps fill out the bridge seasons when fewer flowers are blooming. This time of year, asters are plentiful. “Aster is generally looked at as a weed, but it’s a beautiful flower that’s just grown on me,” says Amy. “And it lasts a really long time. It’s kind of underestimated.”
“It’s just fun to incorporate our surroundings,” smiles Abby. Amy nods, “it keeps it fresh and interesting.”
They have favorite flowers, of course. Abby loves the spring lilacs, a reminder of her New Hampshire upbringing. “They’re very nostalgic for me,” she says. She often loves foliage even more. “There's such a great variety on the farm,” she says. “Recently I put unripe green cherry tomato cuttings into some arrangements. We also love to use winding garlic scapes.” For Amy’s part, dahlias are a favorite. “The dahlias are gorgeous,” she says. “The Market Garden does a phenomenal job with them.”
In addition to the dahlias, the Market Garden organically grows more than 40 flower species, with many varieties and colors of each. The trick is having them all season long. “In the average home garden, all the cosmos, snapdragons, and sunflowers bloom at once,” Josh explains, “but we have to make sure to stagger our plantings so that we have different flowers available at different times.” Many of the flowers are grown in hoop houses to extend the growing season and encourage growth. “They tend to grow taller in the tunnels because of the diffused light,” he explains. And overall, flowers are a productive crop, typically high yielding per square foot. “You can get a lot of stems in less area,” he says.
Whatever the material or the month, the A-Team florists make magic as a pair. “We work really well together,” says Abby. “I feel like we have a very similar eye and aesthetic.” Amy echoes that. “Sometimes we’ll collaborate on an arrangement where she will grab some material and put it in, and I will come behind her to add something else,” Amy says. “And it comes out gorgeous. We like working off of each other and learning from each other. It’s exciting to be able to open up possibilities for what we can do and make.”
And it never gets stale. “It's similar flowers every year, but I just find that there's endless combinations,” shares Abby. “Amy's brought some really fun ideas because she's so excited about seed saving and drying flowers. It opened my eyes to using dried items like Broomcorn, or even just cattails or grasses. We just get started and see what works.”
Not surprisingly, the words “joy” and “fun” come up often in the conversation. “The flowers just give you so much,” says Abby. Back in the garden, Josh and Rachel concur. “It’s hard to not like flowers because they’re all beautiful,” says Josh. Rachel adds, “I always look forward to seeing their arrangements when I pop into the inn.”
“Everybody who sees the flowers loves and appreciates them," Abby concludes, "and that's all that I really want to get out of this job — just spreading that joy.”
