Fresh-cut flower industry blooms across Kentucky

On a farm in Nicholasville, hundreds of flowers are planted in rows along fence lines and in raised beds. Pink-y purple cosmos, white feverfew and lime hydrangeas dot the scene. It’s Fika Acres Farm, owned by Jessica Lynn, who grows a large variety of specialty flowers in Jessamine County, including alliums, sunflowers, irises and mock orange.

Lynn has been farming for about three years, and she’s part of a growing sector of Kentucky’s agriculture economy: cut flowers. It’s gotten so prominent in the state, the commissioner of agriculture declared July Kentucky-Grown Cut Flower Month. There’s more than 200 such farms in the commonwealth.

“There’s a statistic that it’s like over 80 percent of flowers that come into the U.S. are imported, they’re not grown locally, and there’s a whole history as to how the American flower farm kind of died,” Lynn said. “I think we’re starting to see a resurgence of that, of things being grown here locally in America.”

She grew up in a gardening family and dreamed of owning her own farm.

“It wasn’t really until I got my own house and my own backyard and my own space, that I really got into gardening myself,” Lynn said. “I think it’s kind of that like millennial awakening of getting into the grandma hobbies and all of that, and mine ended up being gardening.”