Aunt Willie's Wild Flowers

Our lives are filled with moments of letting go. While it’s hard to think of loosening our grip on the things we love deeply, our hands and hearts can only hold so much. . .  and so after seasons full of holding tightly, there must come seasons of letting go. 

But let me back up and tell you a bit about some of those things I hold tightly and how they came to be.  My flower journey began when I married the kindest man I had ever met, who also happened to be my daughter’s calculus teacher (yes, there’s another story there). Along with Roy came a wonderful old family farm complete with cattle, pastures, woods, open fields, and lots of old run down barns and buildings. Flowers were already growing wild in the fields, mock orange and bridal veil spirea surrounded the Homeplace, and peonies, lilacs, and sweet little perennial beds dotted Aunt Willie’s. Every spring I fell in love over and over again with each sweet bloom. Flowers just seemed a natural fit for the farm, so sixteen years ago we began growing specialty cut flowers and Aunt Willie’s Wild Flowers was born. Initially, our plan was to grow and eventually sell at the Kingsport Farmers Market - just to expand our world a bit and add to our farm income. 

So much of what I know about color and design I learned while making hundreds of market bouquets. I saw what textures and bits and pieces of whimsy caught the customer’s eye.  I learned what flowers lasted forever in the hot Tennessee sun and what wilted quickly. But most of all I saw the people who came each Saturday and told me about their week and what they were going to do with their flowers, where they were going to put them in their home, or who they were going to visit. We developed relationships with our customers, wondered about them when they weren’t there, and thought about them as we prepared bouquets the next week. We realized that flowers had brought the loveliest people into our lives.

And then one of our favorite market friends named Susan announced one Saturday, “You’re going to do my daughter’s wedding” to which I quickly responded “I absolutely do not do weddings,” to which she replied, “You’ve got time, she’s not even dating anyone.” So, of course, one September several years later we did our first full wedding for Susan’s sweet daughter Ann and a whole new world opened up. I had become comfortable with my design and was growing more of the “fun stuff” that added lightness and movement -- think scabiosa, cosmos, veronicas, bupleurum, mints, etc. Creating bridal bouquets took me to a new level of intentionality and creativity which while frustrating to this perfectionist, was also rewarding. The challenge was to see beauty through the bride’s eyes and using petals, twigs, vines, and ribbon bring that beauty to life. And so we added new skills to our arsenal that enabled us to design centerpieces, arbors, crowns, bracelets, and whatever else the bride envisioned.

As we held tightly to weddings, we realized it was time to loosen our grip on farmers markets. We were rushing back from markets to deliver more and more weddings and we couldn’t keep up with the pace.  And so our first difficult letting go began as we transitioned away from farmers markets.  We were vain enough to worry about what our customers would do when we weren’t there with flowers, but surprisingly, they all did quite well. We continue years later to see many of them as they visit the farm, pick up flowers, or meet us at Cracker Barrel for dinner. And early on with the weddings, we revisited many market folk as the majority of our brides came from the relationships formed there previously.  

Now focused on weddings, we actually grew fewer and slightly different flowers. We needed focal flowers like lilacs, peonies and dahlias and lots of fun spillers and fillers, but we didn’t need 100 foot rows of market staples like zinnias and sunflowers. While weddings brought new challenges they also brought such lovely people. Often young and always hopeful, more and more brides visited our farm and entered our lives. Each bride knew our organic open style from social media posts and was already in love with sustainably grown flowers but also understood their seasonal limits. By the time we had completed our initial consult each bride understood that I would grow and arrange as closely to her vision as the flowers would allow. We invited the bride to visit several days before her wedding to see all that was blooming and just to take a breath during such a busy time. This often opened up the bride’s palette choices and helped me know exactly what flowers to use. But it also allowed us to connect one last time over the pretty flowers. I think those visits calmed us both down a bit and gave each bride one more little wedding memory to tuck away. My favorite part of each wedding was handing the bouquet to this sweet girl I had come to know. And while there’s a bit of letting go with each bouquet, there’s also the hope for more flowers and more visits to come. 

Because weddings of “only blush please” left lots of lovely blooms in the field, we began sprinkling in more design workshops. I had been a teacher for enough years that workshops came easily and provided delightful interaction with visitors who loved flowers and all that came with them. We had a lovely work space in the old Homeplace complete with peeling paint and old wavy window glass and an outdoor space behind the chicken coop with views of cattle grazing. And while they created I watched them interact and form flower friendships that would last long after this gathering. 

But we haven’t done any of this alone. Early on we began enlisting young people to help us with each and every part of our business. We never consciously looked for workers; rather, folk have just sort of found us. We call them our “farm kids” and they are the glue that holds this farm together. Usually in some sort of transitional phase of life and perhaps needing a bit of family, they have landed right here with us. We taught them what we knew and sometimes we learned right along with them.  Already best friends, Kristin and Tiffany joined us early. We invited them to the farm for dinner after church one Sunday and kept them here with us until life moved them on. Cutting sunflowers early while the bees still slept and sweet peas late as the sun set sweetened the pot for the long days of transplanting and harvesting in the heat. They became master market bouquet makers and learned wedding design right alongside me. 

Then came Katie who visited the farm the day after she graduated from the college where I was a retired professor. She just wanted to look around a bit but ended up staying three years and even lived here for a time in Aunt Willie’s house. She developed her own successful farmer’s market business using flowers we couldn’t use that week in our wedding. And Katie gave voices to the flower names so “lisianthus” became long and drawn out with a dramatic flourish while “gomphrena” was a high-pitched squeak. But our favorite Katie story involved flying to Minnesota for her wedding carrying suitcases and armloads of dahlias and lisianthus in late October. Katie brought delightful Erin who worked with us until she joined a larger farm a ways off and also brought Anna just to visit and Anna joined us several years later. She had a degree in environmental studies and vegetable farm experience so was a natural at growing flowers but also loved to swing an ax and help Roy chop wood and build fences. She brought Carlynn out on Fridays to help with her CSA bouquets and one sweet October I was able to create bouquets for their elopement. 

Each “farm kid” shared a piece of their life with us and that piece has stayed right here where they left it. We wanted to do something special for our 20th anniversary so we invited them all back as honored guests for a farm celebration. They returned from as far away as Texas and Minnesota and those nearby took time from whatever they were doing to celebrate with us. We played with flowers every way we could think of and each made a bouquet to carry and together flowered the Homeplace, the tables, and even the tractor! That evening they stood with us as we renewed our wedding vows in front of the Homeplace where it all began 150 years ago. I doubt there will ever be a farm celebration that brings more joy. 

And while the letting go of these sweet souls is painful, watching them flourish makes life rich indeed. We love when they grow gardens and plant flowers, when they bring their children to visit, and when they treat the earth and its people kindly. When Tiffany began Ida Mayes Floristry and then Floralkin we felt proud that we’d been one little stop on her amazing journey. Letting go allows our hearts to remember all the goodness our hands have held.

Next month I’ll celebrate 72 trips around the sun and as age takes its toll and I’m forced to loosen my grip on the strenuous demands of flower farming, I’m thinking ahead to the quiet beauties I find in the woods. Planting hundreds of hellebore and fern and building a tiny cabin made of materials gathered from tumbled down farm buildings has me looking forward to new less strenuous adventures to hold close. A sustainability group now meets on our farm, brides can pick up just a bouquet or two, and smaller workshops are planned along with events like hiking the Old Wagon Trail. We’re thankful for the diversity our farm provides as we find ourselves in transition from one season to the next. 

I had no idea of all the goodness that would come with these simple flowers. It seems flowers attract people who need them and so as we’ve handed off flowers to farmers market customers, sweet brides, workshop folk, and so many farm visitors, we’ve gained relationships that last far longer than the flowers that introduced us. We’ve seen friendships and flower businesses grow and blossom. We’ve seen our “farm Kids” come and go and we’ve welcomed them back again. Our hands can only hold flowers so long, but our hearts can hold the people that came along with them so much longer. 

But there’s one last piece to this story, for there was a lady who loved flowers long before me, who grew a garden and tiny flower beds all over her property, who kept a planting journal in 1939, and who willed her part of the farm to my kind husband.  Thank you, Aunt Willie, for holding tight to farm and flowers and then letting go. We hope you would like all that Aunt Willie’s Wild Flowers has become and we know you would love all the people that have followed along.  

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Linda Doan, a retired health/wellness college professor along with her husband Roy, grow specialty cut flowers on beautiful farm land gently handed down through six generations in East Tennessee. Her business, Aunt Willie’s Wild Flowers, named after Roy’s Aunt Willie, originally grew and sold cut flowers at farmer’s markets, but now centers on floral design workshops, farm tours, and micro weddings.

On-farm workshops allow teaching the loose organic design that Linda is known for, using all sustainably-grown materials on the farm. Old buildings like the Homeplace, the old log barn, and the chicken coop turned design studio lend themselves well as work space befitting the occasion.

Farm Tours allow sharing the rich farm history in addition to showing the nuts of bolts of flower farming.

This later-in-life adventure has allowed Linda to combine her love of people, nature, teaching, and beauty in ways that inspire visitors to the farm with a new love of all things wild that grow and blossom.