After two decades of caring for her patients as a registered nurse, Tracy Lawyer made a career change and turned her focus to nurturing soil and seed to produce fresh cut flowers.
“If I’m going to leave something I really love, then I’m going to do something else I really love,” Lawyer says. “I wish I had done it earlier, but I made the change at a good time. My children are grown and have fulfilling careers, and now I’m following one of my passions.”
With a love of flowers and parents who were master gardeners, she made the career switch in 2019, establishing Lick Creek Flower Co. near Pendleton, Indiana.
A friend once advised Lawyer to “make your business today what you want it to be in five years.” That is what she did.
Instead of focusing her efforts on prep-intensive farmers markets, she invests her time in growing and arranging flowers for pickup and sale at the farm’s flower stand.
Lick Creek Flower Co. is essentially a one-woman business with Lawyer growing out annual and perennial flower varieties from seed produced in the United States.
“We soil block everything,” Lawyer says. “It’s an old English practice in which a small press is used to create an individual block of soil for each seed to grow in. It is time intensive on the front end, but it creates healthy plant roots and increases transplant efficiency.”
Lawyer frequently experiments with new varieties, planting at least 10 new types of flowers each year to see how they perform in her soils.
“We choose flower varieties based on how well they grow in our region to ensure we harvest the most beautiful and most productive flowers,” she says.
Varieties grown on the farm include celosias, dahlias, American basket flowers, ruby gold orach, broomcorn, zinnias, tulips, decorative grasses and more.