Locally Grown: Denton Flower Farms

The offerings at Atlanta's farmers’ markets include a little of everything – fresh vegetables and fruit, eggs, cheese, pasta, potted plants and flowers. Mary Denton of Denton Flower Farms is one of the vendors who bring big, colorful bouquets to sell at the Morningside and Decatur farmers' markets.

Denton grew up in Decatur, and while she didn't set out to be a flower farmer, she grew up in a gardening family that loved azaleas and rhododendrons. "I was always around living stuff, and I thought at one time about having a nursery," she said.
When she and husband Bobby bought 20 acres in Covington in 1994, they designed and built a log home, and Denton found herself in the flower business.

Starting off strictly selling wholesale to florists, it wasn't long before Mary began adding retail outlets and now sells retail exclusively. The farm was certified organic in 1995, and she started selling at the Morningside Farmers’ Market that year.

She's since added the Decatur Farmers' Market, and sells through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in Lake Claire and Grant Park. She offers a vegetable CSA program in Covington, and her customers can get flowers there as well. There are no sales at the farm. "I'm just not set up for people to buy here," she explained.

Moving from just flowers to a mix of crops was a business decision. "I knew not to put all my eggs in one basket," Denton said, and gradually she added vegetables to her offerings. These days she sells about 50 percent flowers and 50 percent vegetables.

At the Covington farm, the flower rows stand next to the vegetables – blossoms, foliage and fruit offering complementary textures and colors. The crops are planted in patches on every level piece of ground around the property.

Just like the vegetables, the seasons dictate the flowers she can offer. Spring flowers start with fall planting, as Denton sows seeds of cornflowers, nigellas, coreopsis, Sweet William and larkspur and plants out perennials like peonies and yarrow.
In the spring she's seeding the summer flowers – sunflowers, zinnias, ageratums, gomphrenas and celosias.

A late planting will extend the blooms from these plants that love hot weather, and then dahlias, Mexican sage and lion's tail start blooming in the late summer; broom corn and amaranths in the fall round out the year. At Christmas, she offers forced paperwhite narcissus and amaryllis grown in a greenhouse.

At the farmers' markets she spends much of her time talking to customers about the different flowers and how to care for them. Denton offers a few simple tips for getting the most out of a cut flower purchase. "Cut the stem of each flower at an angle so it has the best chance of taking up water and put them into warm water. Then change the water daily," she advised.

Denton also enjoys watching her customers take home their bouquets, which she calls, "food for the soul."