Flower Farmers Bring Colorful Joy to Customers Throughout Illinois and Beyond

Delivering delight via dahlias, zinnias or sunflowers brings flower farmers as much joy as it does their customers. Meet three Illinois farmers who have embraced the gorgeous blooms of Illinois agriculture so visitors and locals across the state can enjoy a beautiful bounty of flowers.

Clara Joyce Flowers

Drew Groezinger planted his first garden when he was 11. By high school, he had a business selling produce he’d raised on his family’s sixth-generation dairy farm in Jo Daviess County. He’d learned floral arranging in 4-H and FFA and also worked part-time at a flower shop.

As a high school senior, Groezinger planted both produce and dahlias, a beloved flower of his great-grandmother. On less acreage, Groezinger made almost as much money in dahlias as he’d made in vegetables. This lightbulb moment led to Clara Joyce Flowers three years later. The name stems from Groezinger’s paternal grandmother, Joyce, and one of his close friend’s great-great-grandmother, Clara, both women who had a great impact on his and his friend’s lives respectively.

With 9 acres in field production and 20,000 square feet in greenhouses, Groezinger’s business has three parts. About a third comes from selling wholesale to florists in the Chicagoland area. Another third is devoted to floral design for weddings and special events.

“We’ll do between 60 to 75 weddings from mid-April through November,” Groezinger says.

The last third consists of propagation, sales and distribution of dahlia tubers and other cuttings to growers and gardeners across the country. Their retail presence, called Petals on the Porch, offers self-serve flower bouquets on the studio’s front porch on weekends in the summer and fall.

In between all that and managing several employees, Groezinger hosts a podcast titled Between Me and Drew, which covers topics within horticulture, floral design and specialty crop production. Groezinger says sharing experience and knowledge sets him apart from other farmers.

“One of the things that stuck with me, even back from 4-H and various workshops, is that the information is always there, but in our industry, we see a lot of information withheld,” he says. “If I can share my experiences and what I’ve learned to help someone make their process better, that’s fantastic.”

See more: The Buzz About Pollinators and Farming

Danndee Flowers

Even though she’s a fifth-generation farmer growing corn and soybeans with her father, John Longley, on the family’s 1,600-acre farm in Mercer County, Kate Danner says there’s more to Illinois farming than those commodity crops.

Danner started growing flowers commercially as a happy accident. In 2020, Danner and her dad planted gifted sunflower seeds to attract pollinators and birds and maybe use the sunflowers for family photos.

The beautiful blooms inspired Danner to offer them at a local farmers market, and they quickly sold out. That year, one sunflower stem sold at nearly the same price as corn was selling per bushel, and the wheels started turning in Danner’s mind.

The next year, she expanded with the help of her husband, Jason, her dad, and her mom, Carol, who’s also a Master Gardener. The “Danndee” business moniker is a playful twist on Jason and Kate’s last name. They now grow U-cut sunflowers, zinnias, baby blue eucalyptus, lisianthus, strawflowers, celosia, ornamental and culinary-grade lavender, and other stems.

Visitors can shop in the country store where all products are made on the farm, kayak on the pond, enjoy the kids’ play area, or walk through the corn maze, which has a different theme and educational signage each year.

The flowers bring Danner great joy, but perhaps equally important, they’ve changed her perspective.

“If I can be as profitable on 5 acres as I am on 200 acres and I can equate the work, that’s something I look at more closely,” she says. “Being a flower farmer has just made me a better farmer in general.”

See more: Farmers Natural Partners in Pollinator Effort

The Fields at Rendleman Orchards

Wayne Sirles kept putting off his wife Michelle’s request to plant sunflowers for her enjoyment. As the fifth generation of the Rendleman family growing peaches, apples and produce at Rendleman Orchards near Alto Pass, Wayne told Michelle, “I have real farming I’m doing.”

While visiting Wayne’s cousin, who had grown sunflowers for his stand, Michelle photographed Wayne amongst the blooms and posted it to her personal Facebook page.

“It blew up,” Michelle says. “People messaged asking when they could come to our U-pick field, not realizing these weren’t our flowers.”

Seeing the comments, Wayne suddenly became more interested in planting a new, “real” crop.

They now manage The Fields at Rendleman Orchards, a U-pick operation of sunflowers, zinnias and a rotating surprise field of stems. The flowers have brought a new demographic of customers, from teens and pre-teens posting flower-filled Instagram selfies to families with young children, and doubled foot traffic for the retail Farm Market. It’s an example of the sesquicentennial farm’s evolution into new avenues.

“The flowers have also brought an awareness about the importance of pollinators,” Michelle says.

Wayne no longer rents beehives because the flowers attract enough bees. After adding milkweed, Rendleman Orchards became recognized as a Monarch Waystation, supporting the butterflies’ migration to and from Mexico.

Michelle never dreamed a field of flowers would bring delight to so many people.

“You can see the joy not only on their faces but also in their souls,” she says. “It’s just brought us more than we ever expected.”

See more: Farmers and Food Banks Fight Hunger Together

Learn more about Illinois flower farms in this Partners podcast:

Listen to “They’ve Bloomed Where Planted” on Spreaker.