We recently connected with Dr. Liz Fiedler Mergen and have shared our conversation below.

Dr. Liz, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Honestly, the business didn’t start with a business plan. It started with survival.
My husband Josh died of a heart attack suddenly in 2020 during COVID, which meant the death certificate took nearly four months to arrive. That delay meant I couldn’t access our life insurance, bills were piling up, and I was grieving while managing everything alone. I was just trying to get through the days.
Growing up on a farm and heavily involved in 4H as a kid, I always gravitated toward floriculture. I needed something to do with my hands and my heart. I started growing flowers. I sold bouquets at the end of my driveway. People stopped. People bought. Something about the exchange and connection made me happy. I saw the joy on someone’s face over a locally grown bouquet. Flowers gave me something I desperately needed: purpose.
That first year, I made around $7,000. I treated it like a real business anyway. I tracked everything, I was intentional about pricing, and I kept showing up.
Five years later, Sunny Mary Meadow is known for wedding florals, event flowers, subscriptions, a farm store, an event venue, on-farm experiences, and wholesale. Each thing I added had to feed the other businesses, not compete with them.
It’s what I now call the Fertilizer Framework: building a business where every branch supports the ecosystem. Not because I followed someone else’s playbook, but because I kept being intentional, kept saying yes to the right things, and kept building one connected piece at a time.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Dr. Liz Fiedler Mergen, a flower farmer, USA Today bestselling author, speaker, podcaster, and founder of Sunny Mary Meadow in St. Joseph, Minnesota. I built a career as a nurse practitioner, followed every rule, paid off debt, and trusted the plan. Then my husband died suddenly in 2020. I was widowed at 31 with a 3-year-old, and I found out I was pregnant the day after his funeral.
What followed wasn’t a clean, inspiring pivot. It was grief and chaos and figuring out who I was without the life I’d built. But out of that season, something grew, literally.
I started Sunny Mary Meadow on our sixth-generation family farm with a roadside flower stand. Within four years, it grew into a floral enterprise with full-service wedding and event florals, a floral studio and event venue called The Bloom Room, pick-your-own flower experiences, subscriptions, on-farm retail, and wholesale. The farm is now a nationally recognized agritourism destination.
Flowers were just the beginning. I host the Rooted Agritourism podcast, which has surpassed 150,000 downloads. We interview farmers about agritourism, value-added agriculture, and direct-to-consumer farm business strategy. I coach flower farmers across the country through courses and workshops including my signature program, Foundations of Peddling Perishable Products. I also founded Farmers to Florists, a B2B software platform connecting local flower growers with florists and streamlining wholesale ordering.
In March 2026, I released my memoir, Flowers Bloom Anyway: Rebuilding a Life You Didn’t Choose, which made its way to the USA Today bestseller list on its debut week.
What sets me apart? I’m not teaching theory. I’ve built every piece of this myself, from the ground up, while grieving, while parenting, while figuring it out in real time. I believe a meaningful life is built intentionally, not accidentally, and everything I do reflects that.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Sort of, the answer is more nuanced than a clean “yes.” I still work one day a week as a nurse practitioner, by choice. It grounds me, keeps me connected to something I worked hard for, and honestly, I’m not ready to let it go completely. The legacy of Sunny Mary Meadow and everything that’s grown from it? That’s my life’s work now.
What actually allowed this to scale was figuring out what I wanted to be doing and then hiring trusted experts for everything else. I have talented floral designers help with the design work. I’ve built a team I trust. That freed me up to be the visionary, the connector, the person who grows the business and shows up for the community, instead of being buried in emails, spreadsheets, and every bouquet.
The community is why I kept going. My grief story was very public. Everyone knew my late husband. I didn’t want to be the grief lady. I wanted to be the flower lady. My customers, my community, they wouldn’t let me stop. They showed up every single season, they told their friends, they brought their families. Central Minnesota wrapped its arms around this farm before I even fully believed in it myself. I owe a lot of this to the people who said yes before I felt ready.
Here’s how it grew:
It started small, a roadside stand, a few hundred dollars, learning everything about growing, pricing, and selling flowers. Early on, I launched a nursing home matching campaign to sponsor flowers for nursing home residents. It became one of my most meaningful offerings and the community kept asking for more flowers. People stopped at the stand, told their friends, came back the next season. They were so supportive that I honestly couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to.
From there, I listened to what people wanted and added layers: speaking, coaching, podcasting, wedding florals, subscriptions, pick-your-own events, on-farm experiences, wholesale, a B2B software. Each piece fed the next. Revenue climbed. The podcast rebranded. The coaching business followed. I built Farmers to Florists because I needed a wholesale software tool that didn’t exist yet. Eventually, we broke ground on The Bloom Room, our on-farm event venue and floral studio, which was a significant construction investment and completely transformed what Sunny Mary Meadow could be. Most recently, my memoir Flowers Bloom Anyway became a USA Today bestseller and took the speaking side of things national.
The through-line in all of it? I listened to my customers. They told me what they needed and showed me what to build next. I figured out which parts of this work only I can do, and hired trusted experts for the rest. I have part-time talented floral designers and a team I believe in. That’s what allowed it to scale without burning me out. I’m not doing everything. I’m doing my thing, and doing it well.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Yes, and this is something I talk about a lot, because it’s central to how I think about business. I don’t sell flowers. I sell flowers five ways. And actually, at this point, it’s more like a flower ecosystem.
Here’s how Sunny Mary Meadow and its surrounding businesses generate revenue:
On the farm:
• Wedding and event florals (full-service design and installation)
• Flower subscriptions (pre-sold in the off-season — 70% of my flowers are pre-sold before the growing season starts)
• On-farm experiences & Special Events (Flower League, Peony Party, Bring-your-own-vase)
• The Bloom Room: our on-farm event venue for private gatherings, workshops, and small events
• The FARMacy: our farm store with retail florals, gifts, and products
• Wholesale to local florists and businesses
Coaching and education:
• Foundations of Peddling Perishable Products: an online course with 11 modules, a private podcast, and community access
• 1:1 coaching sessions
• VIP farm days
• The Flower Farmer Forum: an annual capped conference for flower farmers
Platforms and content:
• Farmers to Florists: a B2B software platform for wholesale flower transactions between growers and florists
Speaking:
• National keynote and breakout speaking on resilience, life insurance/estate preparedness, and entrepreneurship
• Rooted Agritourism podcast
Publishing:
• Flowers Bloom Anyway: Rebuilding a Life You Didn’t Choose (memoir, USA Today bestseller, available in print, Kindle, and audiobook coming soon)
• When Flowers Bloom (children’s book)

What I call the Fertilizer Framework is the reason none of this feels scattered: every piece feeds the next. The farm creates the story. The story creates the podcast. The podcast brings in new audiences. The speaking sells the book. The book brings people to the farm. Nothing competes. Everything grows together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lizfiedlermergen.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizfiedlermergen/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554001919507
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-liz-fiedler-mergen-54aab3321/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RootedAgritourism
• Other: https://sunnymarymeadow.com/

Image Credits

Rae & Creative Design & Sunny Mary Meadow