This story originally appeared in the July 2024 edition of Town&Gown magazine.
The Centre County agricultural scene is robust, but if you’ve limited your explorations of Happy Valley’s farms and markets to just the products you can eat, you’re missing out. A select few farms around the region are growing and selling a product that serves a very different—but still very important—purpose: simply to make you happy. Here’s what’s happening at four of the area’s flower farms.
‘No one leaves grumpy’
“I used to sit at a desk all day,” says Christie Holloway, owner of Rooted Farmstead in Bellefonte and a former engineer. “To be outside with my kids and see the joy that it brings people as they come in at the end of the day. … Customers will come in and say they had the roughest day at work and they just need to be in the flowers. They come out smiling. No one leaves grumpy. … It’s very fulfilling, health-wise, both mental health and physical health and being with the kids and the community—you can’t beat it.”
Holloway and her husband moved to State College for work and, while they originally were looking for a property with just a few acres, the two ended up with a fourteen-acre farm. They renovated the property’s barn for their own wedding and then, when Holloway’s sister wanted to host her wedding on the farm as well, Holloway decided she would grow the flowers for the event, “with no experience or credentials whatsoever,” she laughingly adds.
The process was a success, as well as “a lot of fun.” Holloway decided to expand her flower growing and began selling flowers for weddings in 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic canceled or postponed most weddings that year, Holloway pivoted to offer u-pick flowers. The demand was immediately evident; to comply with social distancing and crowd restrictions, the farm sold a limited number of tickets for u-pick experiences, and Holloway says in some instances the tickets would sell out in under half an hour.
Since then, the operation has grown, and now Rooted Farmstead is set on a separate 52-acre farm and includes not just the flower farm, but also a floral studio and garden center. About five of the acres are dedicated to growing flowers for cutting, and an acre or two are dedicated to sunflowers, for picking and photo ops. While the farm grows about fifty different types of flowers, Holloway says about a quarter of her growing space is dedicated to dahlias.
Bringing joy into people’s homes
At Back Mountain Flower Farm in Milroy, Katie Aurand started growing flowers for cutting in 2016. Previously a dental hygienist, she made the farm her full-time job in 2021. While the farm isn’t solely dedicated to flowers—there’s also a herd of beef cattle and some of the farm is rented out—Aurand grows about thirty varieties across about an acre and two high tunnels, from tulips (she planted 18,000 bulbs last fall, for this spring’s u-pick) to ranunculus to dahlias.
A large part of Aurand’s work is dedicated to supplying flowers for weddings; she’s booked for weddings almost every weekend from April through October. She also offers arrangements for funerals, as well as a bouquet subscription, wherein subscribers can receive a bouquet each month, or, for certain months, a bouquet each week.
Similarly to Holloway, Aurand considers herself lucky to have left the cooped-up world of dental hygiene, trading it for a career that allows her to be outside, on her family’s farm, doing something that actively brings joy to others.
She says, “I love our farm. I love where we live, and I just feel so incredibly grateful that I get to go outside and do this, and bring joy into people’s homes.”
No downsides
While not as far along in their journey as Rooted Farmstead or Back Mountain Flower Farm, the owners of Happy Valley Lavender Farm in State College similarly didn’t necessarily plan on getting into the flower-growing business. However, when Donna and Jaime Lent moved to the area to be closer to family and found their twenty-acre property two years ago, it seemed like a perfect fit.
“We both love gardening and flowers, and we happened to find this farm that’s just ideal for lavender. It’s nice and sunny, with open fields. It’s a good location, so it just kind of happened,” says Donna. “Lavender is deer-resistant and disease-resistant. It’s a nice perennial and the lavender plants last ten to fifteen years. … We love that we will be leaving a legacy of these beautiful lavender plants. There’s just not really a downside to it.”
So far, the two have dedicated just about an acre to the endeavor, with plans for expanding, but even just the current space can accommodate up to 900 plants. It takes about three years for the plants to fully mature, so the farm isn’t holding any public events this year, but is still offering bouquets and lavender products, like homemade lavender soap, while welcoming visitors to the farm by appointment only. The Lents have already noticed a large amount of community interest in the farm.
A long-standing area staple
In contrast to all of the above, Deb Fisher of Deb’s Flower Farm in Julian has been in the business of flowers for quite a while, almost 30 years, getting her start selling flowers at the Downtown State College Farmers Market.
Since, then, the farm has expanded to reach new customers. “With the farmer’s market downtown, our main customer base really is the university students,” Fisher explains. “During the summer, they’re not around, mostly. We really needed to find other ways to market our flowers during the summer months, and weddings were a good way. … Then, our flower club started with COVID. I took a year off from the market that year and started this delivery service, bringing flowers to people’s homes.”
Fisher focuses a lot of her efforts on dahlias, growing at least forty dahlia varieties, but she also grows zinnias, sunflowers, peonies and other perennials.
A passion for the profession
Many flower farms around the country—including those in Centre County—have expanded their operations beyond growing and selling flowers to offering on-site experiences as well. Rooted Farmstead hosts vendor markets throughout the year as well as workshops and, new for this year, a sunset concert series. Once their lavender fields are more established, Happy Valley Lavender Farm hopes to host events like picnic lunches or yoga in the lavender fields, and Deb’s Flower Farm has been expanding its reach by inviting visitors out for workshops, yoga sessions, and even painting sessions.
While flower farming brings joy to the community through experiences like these, though, it’s not without its challenges, just as is the case with any type of agriculture. Holloway mentioned the inconsistent Happy Valley weather, and the Lents likewise pointed to last year’s lack of rain.
“Our first year, we had a drought. We had weeks of drought that we weren’t prepared for, so we had to get very long hoses and run out and hand water the plants with buckets,” says Jaime.
Aurand adds, “I’ve accepted that, every season, there is going to be at least one thing that goes incredibly wrong, that is just out of my control. It might be pests that take out an entire crop, it might be a blight. Last year, we lost thousands and thousands of tulips because it stayed really nice and cold, and then we had four days in the nineties in April. … Every season, there’s going to be something we’re going to take a loss on, and there really isn’t much we can do about it—drought, not enough rain, or too much rain.”
Still, these flower farmers have no plans of changing their professions (no matter how newfound or not) anytime soon. As Fisher simply sums up, “It’s a passion.”
Where to find your flowers
Ready to get your hands in the dirt and pick some flowers?
Rooted Farmstead offers u-pick cosmos and zinnias, among other options, starting as early in July as possible. The farm also offers a Black Cup Club, in which members can pay one price and then visit the farm to pick flowers once per week, every week that the farm is open for u-pick. Learn more at rooted-farmstead.myshopify.com.
Happy Valley Lavender Farm’s currently available products can be viewed on the farm’s website, happyvalleylavenderfarm.com.
To sign up for a Back Mountain Flower Farm bouquet subscription, visit backmtnflowerfarm.com. You can also keep an eye out for the farm’s u-pick sunflower season, which generally starts in September.
Deb’s Flower Farm still appears at every Downtown State College Farmer’s Market, and information about upcoming on-site events can be found on the farm’s Facebook page, facebook.com/debsflowerfarm. (Fisher particularly mentions one upcoming late-July event hosted at Julian Woods, an art and crepe dinner.)
Wherever you find your flowers, to keep your bouquet looking as fresh as possible, as long as possible, Holloway offers a few tips: “Cut the stems nice and long, strip all the leaves off and make sure there’s no foliage in the water. … Keep them out of direct sunlight. Changing the water out every day and keeping [the flowers] out of direct sunlight is the best way to keep them fresh.”
And as for flower food? She says, “[These] aren’t like your grocery store flowers that were picked two weeks ago and shipped overseas, that really do need that flower food. These are so fresh, they really don’t need that extra step.” T&G
Holly Riddle is a freelance writer for Town&Gown.
