Welcome!
My name is Jessica and I’m the founder and farmer behind Iron Meadows Flower Farm, located in Buckley, IL. I’ve always been a huge flower lover and it’s been so much fun turning my passion into a business.
In 2018, my husband and I bought a house that came with a 1 acre field that had previously been used for growing conventional corn/soy beans. We were trying to decide what we wanted to put out there: native grasses, a meadow of wildflowers? After I spent 5 months working in Alaska as a travel nurse, I discovered flower farming and how well it would not only fit that empty field, but my lifestyle moving forward.
Going into 2024 (year 5 of business) so many doors are opening to our now established American grown flower farm. With our newly added shipping routes, we are able to offer overnight shipping on both retail bouquets as well as wholesale boxes to florists. The creation of Chicago Flower Market allows us to put hundreds of stems on a semi each week to be trucked into Chicago for florists to shop local flowers. Weddings are being booked, designed, and loved by brides.
What Makes Our Farm Different:
American grown blooms went by the wayside in the 1990s when they were outsourced to South America, Kenya, and Holland, among others. Since 2020 there has been a resurgence of American grown flowers, yay!
Our farm is proud to offer Illinois grown flowers that are grown in more sustainable ways than conventional floral greenhouse companies. How are we doing that? We continue to build up our perennial section each year to allow plants to establish their roots in the soil just once and bloom for decades, which are mulched annually with pure hardwood chips that biodegrade into the soil over the years. When we do need to disturb the soil for our annual flowers, we have shifted away from a woven plastic weed barrier that ultimately leaves behind microplastics, and have begun using a biodegradable vegetable starch film that will be tilled in each fall. Pesticide use is minimal during the season to protect our pollinators, though spring thrips and July Japanese beetles must be stopped to protect our crop. We have started planting milkweed species each season to establish a safe habitat for Monarch caterpillars and butterflies. When nature allows, certain varieties are reseeded and we allow those to grow where they are planted the following season (Larkspur, cress, orlaya, yarrow, and more). In the shoulder seasons before and after frosts we grow flowers in our unheated high tunnel structures which do not use fossil fuels to be heated, but instead amplify the sun’s heat through the film. Water usage is applied directly to plant roots through a drip irrigation system which is also how we apply our organic fish & seaweed fertilizer.
