Business Model Highlight: Incorporating Mixed Floral Mediums with Kindly Grown

In this Team Flower Business Model Highlight, we're featuring Kindly Grown, a “mixed media” full-service wedding florist offering live cut flowers, farm-grown flowers (grown by Kindly Grown), and sola wood flowers to clients. Kindly Grown can be found online at www.kindlygrownbykg.com or on social media @kindlygrown.

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Who do you serve?

Using mixed floral mediums in design offers versatility as well as lasting memories for clients. (1)

At Kindly Grown, I'm a forever florist and flower farmer based in Southwest Ohio.

My primary clientele is made up of brides, so I mainly take on full-service wedding orders. However, in the last couple of years, I have also served more couples with bouquet and boutonniere orders for elopements.

I use real flowers, faux flowers, sola wood flowers, and my own grown flowers in my designs. Sometimes I'll even use all four types for the same wedding! This year, I began farming and growing my own flowers. I still have a lot to learn, but it's something I want to dig deeper into (pun intended) as my business matures and develops. I started growing flowers to become a more sustainably-minded, locally sourced business.

My parents recently bought a property with more land. They offered me space to grow, so now I grow flowers to use in my own designs as well as allow brides and bridal parties to pick their own flowers for me to use for their weddings. In addition, I offer you-pick events for my local community and am also dreaming up other ways to use my locally grown flowers to provide new and unique products.

What makes the experience of hiring you unique?

It is my honor and focus to use flowers to showcase sentimental items and meaningful memories from my couple's lives and families.

I love mixing different floral mediums in the same design, so some of the pieces last forever as a memento. Finding ways to add personal touches for my clients is a creative challenge I treasure.

Each flower is given special care and attention. The flowers I grow are nurtured at every stage—from seed to final product. I even give the pick-your-own option for brides and bridal parties. They know exactly where their flowers are coming from, and they get to handpick them directly from the garden.

I also dye sola wood flowers individually and by hand. I use customized colors and often hand-paint details to make the flowers look as realistic as possible. Every flower I provide has been tended to artfully.

All sola wood flowers are artfully dyed by hand. (2)

What is your most popular product or service?

Can you spy the sola wood flowers? (3)

My most popular service is full wedding design. For my full-service weddings, it's becoming more and more popular for brides to order a mix of real and faux flowers.

Sola wood flowers last forever, so many brides want to add sentimental personalization to their wedding florals in a way that will become a sentimental piece.

For example, one of my recent summer brides wanted tulips as part of her design. Her grandmother grew tulips, she had recently passed, and the bride always thought of her grandmother when she saw tulips.

Unfortunately, tulips were not in season at the time of her wedding. I was able to add sola wood flower tulips to her real flower bouquet in loving memory of her grandmother. The bride now has a sola wood tulips bouquet to display in her home to remember both her grandmother and her wedding day.

Some of my other popular products are sola wood flower recreations of real flower bouquets. I use wedding or bouquet photos to recreate bouquets using sola wood flowers and faux greenery.

I also allow bridal parties to pick their own flowers from my garden from July to October. I use what they pick to design for their wedding, or they can hire me to coach them and their bridal party through the bouquet-making process.

Do you work with a team?

Every piece that leaves the Kindly Grown studio has been dreamed up and created by me. However, I don't do this business alone. My family is patient with my schedule, helpful with childcare, and understanding when the dining room table cannot be used because it is full of drying sola wood flowers.

My toddler is increasingly interested in flowers and loves to dig in the dirt as I plant. My husband is so supportive of my dream and offers endless encouragement. He also gets earful after earful of flower-related talk.

I grow flowers at my parents' farm, so they are very involved in the business. My dad especially has been helpful with garden and farm tasks. He starts seeds with me and weeds the garden with me. He also does most of the tasks requiring large farm equipment. It's been incredibly fun and rewarding to work so closely with my dad over the last year.

The whole family plays a part behind the scenes. (4)

It is a joy to see flowers through the eyes of a toddler! (5)

What makes your business model unique?

Using flowers that are locally grown encourages sustainability for your business and the earth. (6)

I intentionally use a mix of floral mediums to create sentimental, meaningful, and sustainable pieces.

I like debunking the myth that faux flowers always look fake and tacky. Discovering sola wood flowers and introducing them to my audience has been a creative win! I love the unique and everlasting floral products I can make with them. Multigenerational legacy is a core value of my business.

Because I grow flowers on my parents' property, they, my husband, and our daughter are all involved in learning agricultural skills. Growing flowers does not offer immediate gratification. Rather, it is an exercise in patience, thinking of the future regarding the health of the earth and us as individuals.

The slow flower movement is a legacy I am happy to be involved in and to raise my daughter into, thinking of the skills she may one day teach her own children. The multigenerational legacy of my clientele is important to me, too. I love learning about a bride's family, what she remembers about those that loved her when she was young, and using those details to create sentimental floral pieces that showcase those special and personal details about her life.

What are you known for, and why do customers come to you?

Adding a personal touch for wedding clients goes a long way in making their special day feel even more magical. (7)

I am known for my unique and custom designs. My designs aren't just customized by client specifics such as color and style, but they are custom in that I use personal and often sentimental details in my designs.

So they are not just beautiful; they also carry meaning. Brides tell me that my approach made them feel seen and known and that booking me was different than booking their other wedding vendors.

I love the moment when a bride shares a family detail or story with me, and I explain how I can creatively add that meaningful touch to her wedding flowers.

What problem do you solve for your customers?

Every wedding florist has heard a bride or a bride's family say in a consultation, "But why would we pay so much for wedding flowers that only last the day and then die?" The topic of product pricing is a whole other article to be written.

However, I have taken this concern seriously. When customers pay for my services, they are often paying for faux flowers that *will* last, they are paying for my expertise in how to save their wedding flowers in creative ways, they are paying for a more sustainably-grown floral product, and they are also paying for unique designs custom to them and their family legacy.

Photography Credits:

(1-5) Rachael Leigh Photography
(6) Christina
(7) Rachael Leigh Photography