By Lily Burris
On a farm in Nicholasville, hundreds of flowers are planted in rows along fence lines and in raised beds. Pink-y purple cosmos, white feverfew and lime hydrangeas dot the scene.
It’s Fika Acres Farm, owned by Jessica Lynn, who grows a large variety of specialty flowers in Jessamine County, including alliums, sunflowers, irises and mock orange.
Lynn has been farming for about three years, and she’s part of a growing sector of Kentucky’s agriculture economy: cut flowers. It’s gotten so prominent in the state, the commissioner of agriculture declared July Kentucky-Grown Cut Flower Month. There’s more than 200 such farms in the commonwealth.
“There's a statistic that it's like over 80 percent of flowers that come into the U.S. are imported, they're not grown locally, and there's a whole history as to how the American flower farm kind of died,” Lynn said. “I think we're starting to see a resurgence of that, of things being grown here locally in America.”
She grew up in a gardening family and dreamed of owning her own farm.
“It wasn't really until I got my own house and my own backyard and my own space, that I really got into gardening myself,” Lynn said. “I think it's kind of that like millennial awakening of getting into the grandma hobbies and all of that, and mine ended up being gardening.”
Lynn keeps some flowers that need more attention at her home, but the majority of her garden beds are on her parent’s Jessamine County farm, where there’s more space and family horses. She grows on about three-quarters of an acre.
“The benefit of growing locally is that when you’re going and purchasing from a flower farm, there are flowers that you’re not going to be able to get at the grocery store or other places because they just don’t ship well,” Lynn said.
She sells at the Lexington and Chevy Chase farmers’ markets, to florists and to Kentucky Flower Market, where producers can sell bulk.
“Buying locally, you get so much more vase life,” Lynn said. “You get so many new varieties to you and different colors, and obviously you're supporting your local community and local farmers.”
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