Winters Farm Florals: Hand Sown, Hand Grown, With Love
Written by Taryn King | Photography by Heartbeat Branding Co.
Dani Winters was a farm girl who left home to explore the world, claimed her part in it, and then came back home to grow. Today, she is the owner of Winters Farm Florals, a full-service floral business that honors tradition and innovation.
Dani’s father is a first-generation farmer and one of the earliest no-till farmers on the eastern shore of Maryland. "As a first-generation farmer, it's taken a lifetime to build up his farm to what it is today. He started from absolute scratch, building from the ground up." For Dani, this was a bittersweet experience. Growing up on the farm, she loved nature, playing in the fields and nearby woods, and watching her dad put his all into the land. Her roots run deep, but she wasn’t sure she wanted that life for herself. Dani got the wander bug and decided to leave home to finish her education and travel. She indeed traveled the world and then worked in education for 7 years after finishing college. But sometime around the age of 30, Dani hit a wall, feeling unfulfilled in the life she had built for herself.
After 12 years away, Dani came home to the Eastern Shore and started working for her dad on the farm. This gave her time to learn all the ins and outs of agriculture and see if there were any facets of the field she wanted to pursue. In 2019, Dani decided to start a little flower garden on the back of the farm. She wanted to put to use all the knowledge and sustainable practices she’d learned from her dad.
The flowers had just started to come in when COVID hit. Dani felt like, through all the pain and anxiety, the world needed more flowers. The flowers had a bit of a golden age during that time with sales, and her business started to flourish. In 2021, she realized that this ‘little’ business was bigger than she was. “The flowers were taking everything—7 days a week, and I had to make a decision. It was time to pivot, and I decided to bring the flower farm to my home in Salisbury.” At the end of the 2021 season, the first greenhouse went in with a new one going up every year.
“I wanted to focus on getting good at growing flowers for the first 3 years, and focus on building out the wholesale business. A lot of florists didn't have many farm partners at the time, and so I came in at a really beautiful time and made some wonderful connections. It can be sort of cutthroat, so you really have to have your growing process down pat.” Explains Dani. Sustainability plays a large part in that process. “We implement sustainability where we can, we use a low-till system—once every two years—for the flower farm. The less we can disturb the natural growing environments, the better. We’re also moving away from the insecticide program and herbicides and trying to be a no-spray farm. We’re moving to tarping and letting Mother Nature kill those weeds!”
Never one to balk at a challenge, Dani kicked off the wedding side of the business with her own wedding in 2023. She grew all the flowers herself and then handed everything off to another designer who did an amazing job. "The wedding florals came about organically. I was asked to do the flowers for a friend's wedding, then another, and it trickled into 2024. It was sort of unexpected."
Dani's passion lies in growing flowers, and so a large part of the business lies in providing flowers for wholesale. However, through selling to and working with other designers, Dani also learned about the mechanics, color palettes, tips, and tricks of floral design. Dani laughs, "Call it passive training, if you will. I have talented designers all around me who I've been privileged to learn from. I still bring in freelance designers to help during the busy season." But putting her hand to design has led to some amazing compositions and arrangements, and a recently styled shoot on family hunting property on the Wicomico River. The shoot featured Winters Farm florals in a design style she calls "Eastern Shore meets Coastal".
Today, the floral farm offers three packages: full-service wedding florals, Seasonal à la carte (a flexible medium between full service and DIY), and DIY farm-pickup. While most of the florals on offer are grown on the farm, Dani can order others. "Weddings come with a lot of vision, and we live in a Pinterest world. We don’t want to limit possibilities for our brides and grooms, and some flowers like roses or hydrangeas are flowers we grow, but if it’s out of season, then we will order them in and supplement with our own.”
For more information, visit www.wintersfarmflorals.com and take their quiz to learn which package is the right fit for your wedding floral needs.
