Why You Should Grow Native Perennial Flowers on Your Flower Farm

Brunch n Blooms Participants tour and pick Native Plants that weave into the orchard understory. Photo by Treasure People Photography

I have always grown flowers—in my mother's garden, in backyards, apartment balconies, and kitchen windowsills—as I worked my way around one mountain peak to the next in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Interior as an outdoor educator and native plant conservation educator.

I later returned to my Midwest roots, wherein, among other adventures, I fell in love with a farmer—and, well, in 2009, my work as a farmer florist was born. Perhaps because I moved around a lot in my early years, perennials' appeal, in particular native perennial plants, made sense. Since then, I have tried to embody their staying power—keeping a robust underground root system with flexible shoots.

Of the roughly 200,000 plus flowering plants laying down their roots worldwide, about 12,334 call Wisconsin their home. Some of these thrive in vases, others hold up with a little encouragement from flower friends, and others are just destined to remain in woodland wilds. However, a flower farmer would be remiss to overlook the potential that native plants provide for your farm's ecosystem and clientele.

Flower Farmers: Here’s Why You Should Grow Native Perennial Flowers

Of the 127 species (not counting the variety of the same species) that we intentionally grow and wildcraft for our bouquets, 48 are native perennial cut flowers. Native plants offer a number of additional advantages over ornamentals and annual cuts—including energy and conservation, increase in pollinators, and simplifying your space. Let’s dive into these benefits below.

Site Prep photo: Sheet Mulching is a great way to prep the soil in the fall for spring planting of native perennials

Energy and Conservation 

Here are some unique ways that native perennials are a helpful choice for your farmland and community.

• Minimal footprint on the land

• Less soil disturbance and microbial disruption that comes with tillage

• Reduced need for investment in infrastructure such as hoop houses and greenhouses that use energy for heating and materials (plastics)

• Increased soil and water holding capacity

• Increased diversity of pollen for our honeybees and native insects, birds, and bats that feast on our flowers and pollinate crops

• Increased intrigue and appreciation of what can be grown locally and withstand our fluctuating weather and growing season.

Increase in Pollinators

Native perennials assist pollinators in the following ways:

1. They attract beneficial insects and pollinators (think butterfly weed)
2. Serve as aromatic pest confusers (native mints such as monarda, mt. mint)
3. Work in tandem with the rhizobium to fix nitrogen (legumes such as lupines and baptisia)
4. And they are often prolific seed producers (coneflowers and asters)

They also embody the 'multiplier effect.' Start with one penstemon, and by fall, during the divide-and-transplant season, you now have five penstemon plants.

Simple Space

You do not need a lot of acreage to establish perennials. If your space is compromised, in transition, and/or you grow vegetables and annual cut flowers, low-cost temporary plots can be installed both within your beds and at the edges.

Cosmos, borage, buckwheat, phacelia, or sweet clover are suitable transition species, good for the bees and for your soils as you start to make space for native perennial plants.

Rattlesnake Master: Native plants such as rattlesnake master and monarda are exceptional native plants for bouquets and for your garden edges.

Tips for Planting Perennials

Native perennial plants do, however, require a little planning in preparation.

If you are direct seeding perennial plants in the Midwest, late fall is the best time as many seeds need stratification (cold period) for germination.

Planting an annual cover crop like buckwheat, which frost will kill, then seeding a native plant mix (for example, butterfly weed, coneflowers, black-eyed Susan, compass plant, asters, etc.) works well for garden edges (the frost-killed buckwheat will also act as a mulch).

You can also prescribe burn for fields (check with your local fire department and/or your natural resource management division for specifics).

Or, if you are okay with a slower return, you can direct seed atop an early snowfall and let the frost heaving action work the seeds into the ground (this is how we seeded our field border).

Site preparation will go a long way in rewarding you in stability, continuity of blooms, a seed bank (potential nursery stock you can sell), and support in the sequencing of bloom time.

By reviewing our 25-acre prairie a bit more closely (which, from a distance, looks like a carpet of yellow-green grass), one will notice it is actually abounding with a diversity of textures, colors, and sounds of nature's music—grown, designed, and distilled into a bouquet.

Among the prairie's subtlety, baptisia, liatrus, and yarrows bloom large. These are instrumental in supporting our June bouquets as we await our annual cut flowers to come into their own.

Baptisia

In June, I love to step into this prairie perfume—a mix of distant honey and sweet pea—with my toes lazing under the veranda of blue-green compounding leaflets, straining to listen to the Earth and sky exchange as my hands find the spires of cream-colored ascension before I snip the blooms for the vase.

Baptisia's spikey racemes pack an equal load of celestial white and blue wonder in a vase and underground as well. The plant works in tandem with rhizobium bacteria on its roots to fix atmospheric nitrogen and make it available for uptake.

Baptisia Skyline: The cream colored ascension of Baptisia’s blossoms add intrigue and texture to June bouquets. Their leaves and seedpods are also great in a bouquet

Liatris

Liatris (aka prairie blazing star), another go-to native perennial cut flower, is the farm's fireworks. Just as we flock to the parks and riversides to watch the firework display on the Fourth of July, honeybees, swallowtails, drink their own Fourth of July cocktail from the blazing star display.

Its versatility on the landscape extends to the bouquet—lasting for a couple of weeks, working as a dried flower, and holding its own in flower structures. Their vertical habit means you can grow a lot of flowers in a small space.

Yarrow

Yarrow likes to set up shop along meadows and neglected spaces and is a valued cut flower and medicinal plant. It also shows up at the base of our apple trees and is one of the few flowers that hold better in a vase when picked in the late afternoon.

In classical times, it was known as herba military because it was used to stanch war wounds. It continues to be used to help stop bleeding and support recovery from colds and flu. I think it represents the “alchemy of flowers,” transmuting the “war wounds” of our own making.

Flower CSA Bouquet: The Author with a spring CSA bouquet of mostly native perennial plants. Photo by Rob McClure, Hilltop Community Farm

Determining the Value of Growing Perennials on Your Flower Farm

Regardless of where and what type of perennials fit into your flower farm, one of the biggest benefits we have seen on the land is their stabilizing effect on the soil.

This practice continues to be reinforced as we witness climate change's impact on our fields and local watersheds. The three wettest years on record in south-central Wisconsin have all occurred since 2016. The next three wettest happened during the previous seven years. So that's the six wettest years occurring in the past twelve. The odds of having another "wettest year on record" are, therefore, effectively one in two at this point, rather than the 1 in 80 that would otherwise be expected (the climate database I'm looking at from NOAA goes back to 1940).

This can dampen the spirit of those getting started in flower farming and any Midwest farmer at the start of another season. Staring-down a 50/50 chance of seeing yet another precipitation-record be broken each year takes a stout constitution. Devoting a 50' x 50 'plot to growing native plants, or even 50 acres if you can spare, means you put your trust in soil stability and the continuity of perennial blooms.

I am grateful for the time spent tending to the soil and being in the company of native plants. They give our bouquets a style, edge, and intrigue that breaks some of the monotony (weeding) and routine that comes with farming.

Their diverse blooms and biodiverse roles on the landscape have helped me attract a diversity of market channels and customers. Their colors and history inspire poems and opportunities for growth and learning. Above all, the resiliency they demonstrate and the wisdom of ecosystems they embody is a constant call to plant and tend to that which outlasts our lifetime.