Growing flowers for profit, right in your own back yard!
Bringing flowers as a gift for a loved one or hostess is a time honored tradition of expressing esteem and spreading cheer. Who wouldn't enjoy a beautiful vase of flowers? It would have to be a person with severe allergies or a dour individual indeed! Everyone who passes a flower shop or stand finds the displays tempting, searching their mind for a reason to take some home. Even in hard economic times, a bouquet of flowers goes a long way towards lifting your spirits. Have you ever wondered how that person with the flower stand got into the business? Many are just ordinary people who love growing flowers. What started as a hobby, bloomed into a small business. Let's take a look at how they did it. Perhaps you'll find growing flowers might well become a business for you too.
Some home gardeners set aside a small plot in their garden for what's known as a cutting bed. Aside from their regular landscaping, with artful drifts of wildflowers, annuals and ornamentals planted around the lawn, the cutting bed is more utilitarian. The long, straight rows of flowers are designed for production rather than a public garden display. Growing flowers in the cutting bed provides fresh blooms destined for vases all around the home.
Many a gardener has been astonished to find that their cutting bed produces far more than they can use in their own home. These happy gardeners start spreading the wealth around to their neighbors and friends. Sooner or later, it occurs to the gardener that growing flowers for a small business venture might produce a little extra income, just by continuing to do something they already love.
When fall comes, the aspiring flower grower expands the cutting bed to twice its original size, planting bulbs for spring, interspersed with summer bloomers, just as you might in your landscape, thus maximizing the cutting bed space.
When growing flowers as a business, you'll want to choose flowers with appeal to the general marketplace, such as lilies, tulips and daffodils for spring and gladiolas, dahlias and daisies for summer cutting. You can also clip sprigs of gypsophilia and fern fronds from your regular garden as 'trims' for bouquets.
So how do you find your market? There's a huge number of options, right in your own community. Restaurants are great prospects, as are wedding and party occasions. Florists may also prefer to buy from a local, quality source. Putting up flyers around town and telling your friends and neighbors may be all it takes for advertising, along with a little footwork to individual businesses, such as restaurants.
Growing flowers can be a viable small business that provides you with some extra cash. Your business may well grow, over time, to a flourishing endeavor. Many others have done so. Why not you?
