A Philadelphia Flower Farm – About Us
In 2008, the first seeds and a dream were planted in a tiny community garden plot. The following year a business bloomed. Today Love ‘n Fresh Flowers is known worldwide for leading the regenerative flower farming and farmer florist movements. And yet our values remain the same: keep our blooms local and serve our immediate community here in Philadelphia.
Our Guiding Beliefs
- Save open green spaces in urban environments (starting with our farm) and safeguard ALL life that lives there: big, small, and even microscopic.
- Create a small farm example here at home in Philly that can be leveraged for big change further afield.
- Believe that everyone can find passion, meaning and creativity in their lives. Flowers are our tool of choice.
- Attract an engaged and inspired customer base that we call friends, not customers, so that we can be honest and open with them rather than holding them at arms’ length.
- Adopt a spirit of service in all that we do.
- Focus on our local community but look to solve “big picture” sustainability challenges, leading by example.
- Build connections — for ourselves and for others.
- Ignore “competitive” dogma by being impossible to replicate; be authentic in our singular unique story.
- Treat all members of our team with dignity, love, and respect; valuing individuality, personal growth, and financial security.
- Be gritty, not glossy, and embody in all tasks the can-do, get-it-done spirit of a farmer.
- See challenges as opportunities; the bigger the challenge, the greater the pay out for change.
- In all the above, be steadfast in the idea of this (Love ‘n Fresh) being bigger than all of us; we are here to create change in our industry and for the urban spaces of the future.
Our Farm
Love ‘n Fresh Flowers stewards five acres in the Andorra/Upper Roxborough neighborhood of northwest Philadelphia. While well within the city’s limits, this section of Philadelphia has a long-standing agrarian tradition and remains surprisingly “rural”, sitting on bluffs high above the Schuylkill River, surrounded by several hundred acres of woodland.
Our exuberant flower fields play host to countless birds, bees, butterflies, lady bugs, turtles, toads, and many four-legged furry friends. Large plantings of perennials and shrubs, especially native varieties, provide unusual design ingredients and boost biodiversity. The fields are regeneratively-managed, meaning lots of compost and natural fertilizers like kelp and cover crops are used to nourish the plants and the soil. No toxic chemicals are ever applied anywhere in the fields or growing houses.
With a large greenhouse and two unheated hoop houses, we are busy growing 11 months out of the year. Each individual plant at our farm is lovingly nurtured and every bloom is harvested at the peak of perfection.
While the farm is not open to the general public, on-farm workshops and field days are a great opportunity to see our flower fields!
Our Evolution
A great many things at Love ‘n Fresh Flowers have evolved over the 16 years we’ve been in business. At the very beginning, what we grew was simply sold at two small farmers markets. A handful of weddings and workshops entered the mix the second year. More weddings and a popular flower CSA come to the forefront our third season and we needed drop farmers markets. For more than a decade, Love ‘n Fresh Flowers served as a premiere wedding florist in Philadelphia, helping more than 500 couples celebrate their love in the best venues our area has to offer.
Along the way, we were always hosting flower workshops at the farm, delighting in sharing the beautiful space with others. In 2020, like so many small businesses, we were forced to evolve overnight. Our intimate workshops and a new flower delivery service, called Porch Petals, took front seat for a few years. We began collaborating with other flower farms to sell collectively together, launching our sister company, Philadelphia Floral Guild in the summer of 2022.
Today, Love ‘n Fresh Flowers focuses on education and making connections. We now put our energy into hosting workshops, field days, and our peer based Floral Cohort training program, as well as fostering community online through courses, podcasts, and the Regenerative Flower Farmers Network. For the time being, we are taking a break from wedding flowers, but we do still offer flowers for green funerals and corporate events.
Evolution is ongoing, especially in a small business such as ours. We’re grateful to all those who have been on this journey with us. We’re excited to see what the future holds!
