Kansas flower farmer cultivates ‘insurmountable amounts of joy’ at Eudora farm
In the heart of Kansas, where the wind can be relentless and summers scorching, a unique story blossoms.
Ashley Hutchison, 40, a mental health professional, finds joy and purpose cultivating beauty as a flower farmer at her new venture, Fern’s Farmette, a specialty cut flower farm she opened in 2023 in Kansas.
This isn’t just a business for Hutchison, it’s a passion deeply rooted in a childhood spent “roaming around her grandma’s farm and kind of running wild” in western Kansas. This early connection to the land instilled a lifelong love for being outdoors, even if flowers aren’t “the most traditional crop” in Kansas.
Before and after her work hours—a role for which she holds a Master’s degree from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Ball State University—you’ll find Hutchison gardening in several micro garden plots tucked in around her home nestled on 20-acres outside of Eudora in Douglas County. At the burgeoning flower farm, Hutchison coaxes beautiful, sustainable, cut flowers to life.
“I get a lot of, just joy out of it,” said Hutchison while explaining that while flowers are considered a luxury, “they actually bring, like, an insurmountable amount of joy to people who love them,” providing “a lot of joy and happiness in their day to day” for herself and others.
The Fern’s Farmette name, pays tribute to Hutchison’s late grandmother, Fern, who instilled in her a deep sense of compassion and even taught eight-year-old Ashley how to play Blackjack. It also “pays homage to all the influential women, known and stories untold, culminating in Farmette’s existence,” Hutchison wrote on her website.
Serendipity played a key role in the farm’s beginnings. In December 2021, while perusing real estate listings on her phone during a stop at a Lawrence brewery with her husband Justin Stein, Hutchison saw an online ad for a rundown farmhouse in Eudora. The ad was just 24 minutes old and Hutchison said she insisted to Stein that they take a serious look at the property. Within 24 hours, they had viewed it virtually, then in person. And by the end of that same day, they’d put in an offer.
Hutchinson posted on her website, “I asked Justin when he knew we’d be making an offer after seeing the property and house in person and he replied, “The second you stepped out of the car,” and he was absolutely right. They purchased the property for what it could be, not the neglected state it was in, securing their future home despite its need for a complete remodel. The home would also need a thorough clearing of snakes and snake debris.
A former college psychology teacher, Hutchison says she finds excitement in the “never ending world of finding new flowers to grow and new things to try,” explaining that after almost 15 years of dabbling in flowers and vegetables, she still tries at least “10, 15, 20 new varieties” each year.
The weather certainly brings a challenge to growing flowers in Kansas. Contending with heat and humidity in high summer and increasingly erratic weather patterns, Hutchison explains that she does not really have a stable sense of when the spring begins. Sometimes summer happens in March when we need it to be spring she says. “But we do a good job of handling the weather,” Hutchison said.
Fern’s Farmette specializes in sustainably growing a wide variety of cut flowers that are sold through flower bouquet subscriptions, weekly or monthly, and bulk flower sales which appeal to for DIY weddings and event customers. Hutchison said some popular flowers she grows include ranunculus, delphinium, snapdragons, rudbeckia, batchelor buttons, statice, dianthus, and various filler flowers.
“I think probably the first flower that captured my obsession was Dahlias,” she said. A sometimes finicky flower, Dahlias are grown from tubers, and are a labor of love for Hutchison. They’ll bloom in late summer and are one of her primary flowers she said. “The challenges I’ve had growing that flower and finally figuring out how to get them here in Kansas has been really rewarding.”
Another wildly popular variety includes a new favorite, shes calls Lizzy, short for lishianthis, which she grows from plugs planted in the early spring. “That flower also is tricky to start, but once it gets going, it actually really likes the heat and the humidity in Kansas. And so that flower is really, I think, almost started to outrank dahlias at this point.”
In the fall, Hutchison plans to add a hoop house to cultivate florist quality roses, which she said are being grown now in Ohio, but not yet in Kansas. A large workshop will also be built on the property for Hutchison to house a full-size floral cooler and also wood shop for her husband, a trim carpenter and the farmette’s sole handy person.
From individual stems to handmade bouquets, Hutchison’s passion extends to making beautiful flowers accessible.
“I think everybody deserves to have beautiful flowers for whatever events or life moment they’re celebrating,” said Hutchison. “And I think it fills a need for folks.” She finds particular excitement in the DIY buckets, noting that “traditional floristry is very expensive,” and many people “just can’t afford it or they don’t want to.” Hutchison added, “The DIY buckets fill a need.” Customers come directly to the farmette to pick up their flowers. “People come to me,” she said. “I don’t deliver and I don’t do farmers’ markets.”
On a recent sultry Wednesday evening, subscription customers trickled into Fern’s Farmette to pick up their flower bouquets. Customer Frances Lyons of Eudora smiled as she received her subscription bouquet, which Hutchison assembles and wraps in brown paper at her kitchen table. “ I just love coming out here and seeing what has been pulled for the week,” Lyons said. “It is always just a fresh surprise,”
Hutchison said she hopes to expand her peony beds and envisions the farmette becoming a destination for local photographers offering “mini-sessions” with the peonies as a backdrop, despite their short spring bloom time.
In addition to cultivating flowers, Hutchison is growing her social media presence on Instagram with photos and videos of beautiful flowers. “It’s really meaningful to be able to use our land in a way that helps the environment instead of harming it,” said Hutchison. “Unique flowers bring an insurmountable amount of joy to people who love them.”
