We were lucky to catch up with Carolyn Ucciferro recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carolyn, appreciate you joining us today. 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.

In the spring of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I started a memory garden to honor two of my late aunts that loved flowers. It was a small cutting garden with four raised beds, pea gravel and a wooden fence sourced from fallen trees on our property. Working with my hands and seeing the beauty of the garden throughout the season was the perfect mix of honoring, healing and honing skills. These lessons in that original cutting garden would soon be needed as I began my farming and floral business the following season.

Carolyn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My journey with flowers started as a young girl working in a neighborhood flower shop. I have magical memories of this time as I loved everything about it: the buzz of the designers creating, the intoxicating smells of the flowers and foliage, the warmth & welcoming feel of the shop as I entered. It’s funny how the smell of eucalyptus still reminds me of this time and brings me full circle as to why I’m in this business. I’ve always felt a connection to flowers and the way they can bring positivity to the world. Here’s our farming story:
In 2017 my family of 6 built a home on 9 acres of farm land in Harford County. We rented out most our land to a dairy farmer that grew corn. We always knew we’d do something with our property but with no farming experience or equipment, we never dreamt it would be digging into the soil to plant ourselves! But that’s exactly how it unfolded after that first year with the cutting garden. I took a few educational courses, read tons of books, asked a million questions and just dug in. I knew the cutting garden wouldn’t be enough to produce enough flowers for a business so we fenced off about an 1/8th of an acre in one our farm field in 2021 and Joy in Hand Flower Farm was started! We expanded a bit in 2022 and now have a seasonal flower business with flowers we grow right here on our land.
We sell wholesale to local designers, provide diy buckets for weddings & events, offer bouquet subscriptions for pick up at our road side farm stand and take personal orders like boutonnières, cuff corsages & occasion flowers for holidays like Mothers Day and birthdays.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Keeping clients happy with personal attention is one of my main goals. Too often in a big business clients go unseen but the privilege of serving clients in a small business setting is that you get to connect and learn about the person. If you can make customers feel cared for, it goes a long way! The cool thing about flowers is there’s usually a story behind why someone likes a certain flower or is giving flowers as a gift. We all have flower memories so it’s a natural way to chit chat with clients and connect. I keep in touch with customers in a few ways- Instagram and a monthly emailed newsletter are two of my top ways. I think it’s important to keep clients in the loop on what your business is offering but also add value with “free” info. For example, I may pepper in information about best flower care tips or when to plant certain flowers in a garden. Sharing this info along with what our business offers can go a long way.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Road blocks are everywhere in any business. Being able to pivot, adapt and never.stop.learning are all traits that will bolster success in a new business. In flower farming, especially when growing naturally and organically, those roads blocks might be in the form of bad insects, soil deficiencies, a terrible storm rolling through or weeds being tough to keep up with. I’ve learned quite a few lessons over the last few growing seasons that have guided what I’ll do the following seasons. But knowing that some things are out of our control and looking for the good in a bad situation usually straightens my mindset to brush it off and keep plugging along.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joyinhandflowerfarm.com
• Instagram: @whitehomeonthehill