Kara Jamison, flower farmer and owner of Blooming Joy Flower Co, shares her story to remind us that beautiful things can blossom from our greatest tragedies. Her cut flower farm is a dream garden come to life.
https://www.bloomingjoyflowerco.com
In my short 38 years here on earth, I have learned that beauty can come from tragedy. I am Kara Jamison, a cut flower grower and educator living on a farm in Tennessee. My cut flower business came to fruition after experiencing heartache. Here is the story of how our farm has bloomed into what it is today…
Building a dream takes patience, determination, will, and — much of the time— sacrifice. This is exactly what we did to turn a raw piece of land into a flourishing homestead filled with cut flower gardens.
My husband and I wanted to build a farm where we could raise our four young kids, have thriving gardens where fresh fruits and vegetables grew abundantly, and have livestock animals that live a beautiful life. The farm would provide a safe haven for our family and nurture memories together. That was the dream for the farm we wanted to build.
In 2016, my husband and I sold our beautiful neighborhood home and bought a raw piece of land out in the country. Having nearly all of our belongings packed away in storage, my husband, four young kids, and I moved into an RV on our raw piece of land and started building our home and dream farm. Growing cut flowers wasn’t even on the radar until one day something started growing inside of me. A seed was planted in my heart to learn how to grow cut flowers to bring others joy. It became a burning passion and has led to a life that I never even dreamed of. Digging in the dirt and getting our nails dirty can be therapeutic for our souls. Nature found me as a way of healing my heart and in turn led to the creation of my flower business today.
Shortly before we moved to our farm, my world shattered in 2015. At 32 years old, I found myself orphaned from my first original family. My dad had passed away a few years before and in April of 2015, I lost my young brother suddenly. On Christmas Eve of the same year, I lost my Mom to a long battle with breast cancer. I never dreamed that the pain of going through these life-altering events would one day lead me to inspire others around the world to get their hands in the dirt and plant their own cut flower gardens, where much joy would be experienced.
In April of 2018, I started my first cut flower garden with very little knowledge of what I was doing. My husband and I had grown vegetable gardens for years but we had not grown many flowers. All I knew was that I had the will and determination to learn how to grow cut flowers to bring others joy. Initially, I thought this meant providing flowers locally in the form of cut flower arrangements. I dug in and learned everything I could about growing cut flowers and to my surprise, many flowers grew! I began to make floral arrangements for friends and family which eventually turned into providing arrangements for new customers. I decided to take my newfound cut flower adventure and start a business. I named it after my mom, Joy, and called it Blooming Joy Flower Company…
Read the rest of Kara’s story in the Summer 2022 issue of The Turquoise Iris Journal!
