We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex Norton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.

Alex, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I have been a lifelong gardener, crafter, and outdoor enthusiast. My late mother instilled in me a love of plants and crafting at a very young age. I believe I was 5 when I started growing my own snapdragons and sunflowers. We also visited a local flower farm frequently for fresh flowers when I was a child. Flash forward to late 2019/early 2020: I was working a fall & winter seasonal job for several years, and was struggling to figure out what to do with my summers. I knew I loved flowers and I could grow them. I was already growing flowers and vegetables around our house and having a lot of success with it. One night I had a dream that I was vending flowers and bouquets from a tricycle. When I woke up, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to grow cut flowers as sustainably as possible and share that beauty with my community. I also wanted to spend more time with my family and show my son what you could do with hard work. Building my own business would allow me to do all of that and so much more. Eventually I left my seasonal job to make Hummingbird’s my fulltime job and to really give it my all. In doing that I looked for ways to supplement income in the fresh-flower off season (winter.) I started crafting with my dried flowers which lead me to cyanotype printing with my dried botanicals. Cyanotype printing has been around since the 1840’s and is commonly known as “sun printing.” When I was a child I had my first experience with cyanotype printing at summer camp. I loved it, but didn’t do it again until 2022. It was a way of using my homegrown botanicals to create wearable art and home decor. I am one of very few in my area that prints using cyanotype, making Hummingbird’s stand apart.

Alex, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a mom, flower farmer, small business owner, crafter, and artist. A lifelong love of gardening and crafting helped me create Hummingbird’s Blooms. Hummingbird’s Blooms is a micro flower farm located in Upstate NY. It is also an online shop for handcrafted botanical goods. We focus on locally grown specialty cut flowers as well as dried florals and herbs. We try to minimize our impact on the local ecosystem by using organic growing methods and we offer bouquets by bike delivery in the immediate area. Our goal as a business is to share the beauty of locally grown seasonal flowers and to foster a sense of community. We are teaming up with other small businesses to offer workshops to share our knowledge with the local community.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started with a blank slate. Luckily I had built up a library of flower photos over the years and was able to use those to jumpstart our instagram. I was very focused on showcasing seasonal flowers and high quality photos. I shared our page with my friends and family and asked them to do the same. It was really a grassroots effort to get the word out. I didn’t do any paid advertising for our social media pages, because honestly I was scared to grow the audience too quickly. I wanted it to be organic and for our followers to be our customers. My best advice is to post consistently and to diversify your feed with reels and videos as well as static posts.

Have you ever had to pivot?

This season was very difficult. The weather was extremely dry and warm, which put all of the flowers behind by a month. Our dahlias didn’t hit full bloom until 3 weeks before the first frost. I was panicked. I had planned our fall sales around the dahlia crop and it was failing. I had to think quickly. I ended up changing course, and focusing on dried flowers and cyanotype printing. These were things that were not weather dependent. I could use existing dried florals and create beautiful pieces of wearable art, home decor, and accessories. This not only saved our season, but became a huge portion of our sales for the year.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hummingbirdsblooms.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/hummingbirdsblooms
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/hummingbirdsblooms