One Fredericksburg farm’s specialty is fresh-cut flowers—and they’re breathtaking to behold.
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Story by Pamela Price
We’ve been enamored with Windmill Meadow Farm for some time, having stumbled across their Instagram feed this spring. The flower farm’s featured blooms are always enticing, evoking both homespun memories and upscale home decor spreads.
What we love most about this small company, however, is that it’s bootstrapped by a Hill Country couple who saw fit to carve out a little space on their Fredericksburg property to grow flowers to feed the spirit. Named for a refurbished 1886 Standard wooden windmill, the cut flower farm is very much a grassroots enterprise.
“I first started in our 30’ x 30’ garden and came to realize I needed more dirt,” said Nancy Person via an email interview. “In the summer of 2018, we cleared space and brought in 45 truck loads of sandy loam and garden mix to make our rows and lay the drip irrigation. As you know the Hill Country is rock ground in a lot of places. We now have 18 rows that are 30’ x 100’ of garden growing room.”
Although the growing space now measures roughly 1 acre, Nancy and her husband Paul still work the flower farm’s field themselves most days.
“Monday and Wednesday mornings are our typical days to harvest flowers,” said Nancy. “We fill our buckets with water and load them in our [John Deere] Gators and go down all the rows harvesting flowers for our customers. We bring the flowers to the barn apartment that is air conditioned to rest. When it is time to make our bouquets, we bring all the buckets of flowers onto the porch so we can pull from them to make the bouquets. . . . It’s a lot of work, but the wonderful feeling for me is seeing someone smile with joy when they see their bouquet.”
Nancy noted that her homegrown bouquets are delivered on Monday and Friday to the flower farm’s subscription members. “We have a subscription program where a customer gets five weeks of beautiful flowers delivered to their home or office. Tuesday is our day to deliver to local florist in Fredericksburg and Kerrville. On Wednesdays, we have a wonderful helper who helps us plant seeds, seedlings and performs many other tasks to keep the farm operating.”
Until October, Windmill Meadow Farm blooms can be found Thursdays at the Fredericksburg Farmers Market located in the Marketplatz on Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Locals can arrange to have flowers delivered, too.
“We have some customers that call to schedule an appointment and come out with their buckets,” said Nancy, “and we will walk the field with them, collecting flowers Friday afternoon. We also deliver to one of Fredericksburg’s best restaurants and a winery on Hwy. 290. They understand the philosophy of flowers and wine. We also deliver to a local church for their large altar arrangements and occasional supply flowers for custom installations by local decorators.”
One noteworthy collaboration took place at the end of July. Slaughter Design Studio featured Nancy’s blooms in a gorgeous window display at The 8th Street Market in Comfort. Person’s vivid blooms paired beautifully with chairs and a sideboard painted an on-trend (and eye-catching) teal.
“We are always open to working with more local designers to fulfill their flower needs,” Nancy said. “We are currently exploring opening the farm for private tours to teach classes on cutting flowers and making your own bouquets.”
Available flowers vary with the seasons, of course, and Nancy has shown an unusual knack for knowing what will best suit her customers’ tastes. Some might call it a gift for gardening, but considerable forethought goes into planning the farm’s blooms.
“There are many varieties of beautiful flowers to select from. We choose flowers that are well suited for our climate here in Fredericksburg, and we also pay attention to how they perform as cut flowers. We look for texture, colors and how well the colors will blend together. We are growing a large variety of magnificent sunflowers, zinnias and celosias along with our signature lemon basil.”
For gardeners with enough space and interest to pursue an at-home cutting garden, Nancy advises that folks start slow and focus on just one or two types of blooms first.
“You can grow a wide variety of flowers in a small 10’ garden bed––or scattered throughout your existing flower beds––and have beautiful blooms all summer. You will definitely need to consider your way of watering. I would suggest using drip lines with timers to insure the flowers get adequate water to keep them going. This will mean less time spent watering and more time spent enjoying your cut-flower garden. Seedlings need to be watered more while sprouting, and most all the plants require full sun. Consider your placement with the sun in mind. The fall is the best time to plant trees, shrubs and your early spring flowers including wildflowers that need cool winter temperatures to germinate.”
If that seems like a lot of work, remember you can also just drive over to Fredericksburg and purchase your blooms from Windmill Meadow Farm at the aforementioned Thursday market. We can’t think of a better reason for a summer roadtrip, in fact.
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