Farm-to-vase flowers trend is booming in the Tulsa area

Local flower farms are the next wave of the buy local movement.

This means that these beautiful flowers may have traveled just a few miles from the soil in their field to your favorite vase. Many local florists are seeking flowers from these newly emerged farms, and you can also purchase a subscription to have flowers delivered directly to your home.

Each farm has its own rules for delivery and collection so be sure to check the farm’s website or social media.

Here are some farms that are making Tulsa a more beautiful place by harvesting each and every bouquet fresh.

Midtown Micro Flower Farm

Starting a flower farm in the middle of midtown Tulsa may seem unlikely, but with flowers galore for Mother’s Day, it makes perfect sense.

Genevieve Burke and her mother started gardening in 2019. By the spring of 2020, when pandemic isolation measures began in earnest, the yard was bursting with flowers and gardening became a great way to spend extra time at home.

“I thought it would be perfect to line up the bouquets and sell them on the side of the road for Mother’s Day in May. I sat in my driveway and sold them. I think I sold six. It was such an accomplishment,” said Genevieve, a sophomore at Booker T. Washington University.

And so Midtown Micro Flower Farm was born.

From the front of their home in the Utica Square section of town, it looks like any other home with attractive landscaping.

But it’s in the backyard where the magic happens, where there are raised flower beds and rows of straw bales.

The Burkes love growing rare and unique flower varieties and also accept prepaid subscriptions and custom orders.

Each prepaid flower plan allows you to receive a floral arrangement every month during the growing season, from May through November.

Options are available in three-month or seven-month increments and in small, medium, and large sizes, allowing you to choose from a variety of price points.Bouquets come in a variety of flowers, including anunculus, anemones, tulips, peonies, poppies, alliums, hydrangeas, strawflowers, zinnias, roses, dahlias, and heirloom mums.

Subscribers will pick up their arrangements from the farm on Saturday morning.

Wild Lark Farm in Claremore is a small flower farm that has been providing flowers to florists, designers and flower lovers since 2017. Owner and grower Teri Barr grows flowers from March to June and again from September to mid-November.

While closed to the public, the farm offers flower subscriptions through Friday Night Flowers and also hosts a tulip market in the spring. Spring and summer flower subscriptions are sold in the winter and fall subscriptions in the summer, and you can follow them on social media to find out when they have an abundance of flowers to buy for bouquets.

Barr said locally grown flowers are becoming a trend, benefiting local florists and flower lovers. If not locally grown, flowers purchased here are typically sourced from South America or California, he said.

“But with the local grow movement, there’s been a trend towards growing local flowers,” Barr says. “Local flowers tend to last longer, and with local flowers you get to really experience the flowers in their natural state.”

Barr said they try to accommodate color schemes based on demand, and Wild Lark is always growing something unique.

“Although softer colours are often used for events and weddings, we are also seeing a trend towards bolder, more impactful colours,” Barr said.

While people may think of flower farms as businesses that are only open when the weather is nice, Barr said there is always something going on at a flower farm.

“People don’t understand that when you’re growing flowers, it never really stops,” Barr said. “A lot of the plants are planted in the fall. In the winter, you have to be careful that the plants don’t freeze to death. It’s a continuous job.”

The flowers are the latest addition to the historic Fisher family farm near Slick. The Fisher family has farmed the land for more than 100 years and is known for its egg production.

Allison Lambert grew up on the Fisher farm. She spent many of her days driving tractors, grading eggs, riding horses, caring for animals and working in the yard. After graduating from Oklahoma State University in 2015 with her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, she returned to the farm to become a large animal veterinarian.

In the summer of 2015, she got married and, with the help of her cousin, grew all the flowers for her wedding, and she quickly realized how much she loved growing flowers.

Lambert started out by planting a vegetable patch with flowers, but discovered that her rows of zinnias and sunflowers were her favorite parts of the garden. So many people asked if they could pick the flowers, she realized there was a demand, and so she launched Slick Chick Blooms in 2018.

“I have two little daughters and one of the reasons I’m doing this is because I want to do something with them,” Lambert said.

During the growing season, she sells to many local florists and provides a subscription of fresh flowers delivered weekly to the Bristow and South Tulsa areas.

Tulip subscription deliveries begin the first week of April, which includes a four-week supply of just tulip bouquets. She also sells twice-monthly and monthly subscriptions delivered April through September that include tulips, ranunculus, peonies, sunflowers, zinnias, lisianthus, dahlias and more.

“I’m trying to grow some really unique tulips, double flowers and peonies — a lot of things I’ve never even seen in a florist before I started growing them,” Lambert says. “I also have a DIY bucket that you can come to the farm and pick right there.”