Our story
A small farm with a big dahlia problem.
Freckled Brunette is a one-woman flower farm in Valentine Nebraska, growing dahlias and cutting flowers with the kind of obsessive attention that probably isn't healthy, but produces really beautiful flowers.
How it started
It started with three yellow collete dahlia flowers from the local greenhouse and my backyard. That was just 3 years ago. The three tubers became thirty, then one hundred, then a number I stopped counting because it felt more manageable that way.
I grew up in Iowa, where the soil is rich and the summers are relentless. I didn't plan to become a flower farmer; I planned to do a lot of things before this. But dahlias have a way of rearranging your priorities
Freckled Brunette started as a name I gave to myself as a business name people would remember, and of course I have lots of freckles from the endless hours of gardening I do each year. The name stuck. Eventually, it became the flower farm name.
How we grow
Slow, deliberate, and a little obsessive.
We don't grow everything. We grow dahlias — and a handful of companion cutting flowers that play well with them. That focus is intentional.
No shortcuts on soil
Every bed gets amended before planting season. We compost heavily, test regularly, and treat the soil like the living system it is. Healthy soil makes healthy plants. Healthy plants make flowers worth growing.
Varieties that earn their space
We trial dozens of new varieties each season and keep only the ones that perform — strong stems, long vase life, and colors that hold. If a variety doesn't earn its row, it doesn't come back.
Hand-dug, hand-packed
Every tuber is dug by hand in fall, inspected, labeled, and stored through winter. Every order is packed by me, personally. There's no warehouse, no fulfillment center — just a farm, a packing table, and a lot of bubble wrap.
Honest about availability
We sell what we have. When something sells out, it's gone. We don't oversell, backorder, or substitute without asking. The season is short and the supply is real — we'd rather be honest about that than disappoint you.
The grower
Hi, I'm the whole operation.
I'm a self-taught grower who learned mostly by doing things wrong and then doing them again. I've killed more dahlias than I care to admit, read every book I could find, and spent more hours on dahlia forums than is probably socially acceptable.
I grow on about an acre in central Illinois, which is enough space to take seriously and small enough to manage alone. I do everything myself — planting, staking, deadheading, digging, packing, shipping, and answering every email that comes in.
I started selling tubers because people kept asking. I started shipping bouquets because I had more flowers than I knew what to do with. I started the email list because I wanted to talk about dahlias with people who actually wanted to hear it.
Come grow with us.
Join the list for early access to tubers, cutting availability, and bouquet subscriptions — plus the occasional dispatch from the field.
No spam. Just flowers.