About Us
Britton and Walter are the owners and growers of Prospect Hill Flower Farm, located in Louisa County, near Richmond, Virginia. Now in their tenth year, this husband and wife team grow on about two acres. They love that their "office" is their fields and getting their hands in the soil!
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Walter is from Bolivia and they met while Britton was working there with Peace Corps. After working in Bolivia for many years in agriculture (Walter) and international development programs (Britton), they decided to move to the U.S. to start their own farm.
Walter's education is in agriculture and he has worked extensively with commercial vegetable farms. Britton has a background in business and grew up around flowers. Britton's mother, an avid rose gardener, arranger, and former flower show judge, is an indispensable resource and flower mentor.
Our Vision
Be a quality source of common and uncommon, locally grown blooms for Virginia florists, designers, and flower enthusiasts. Through our production of flowers, maintain a profitable enterprise and our farmland, using sustainable growing practices that protect our wildlife, waterways, and community.
Sustainable Agriculture
We use sustainable growing practices on our farm. There are different interpretations, but for us it means using growing systems for the long-term, protecting the environmental health of our farm while ensuring the profitability of our business. We don't use chemical pesticides on the farm, which only serve as a quick fix for an underlying problem. Instead, we feed our soil with compost, mulches, cover crops, and organic fertilizers, "building" healthy soil and the web of life underground.
Great soil = strong plants = beautiful flowers!
Promoting beneficial insect habitats on our farm is also an important part of our sustainable growing practices on the farm. Our farm has been in farming families since the 1800's and we are excited to continue that farming tradition.
How we grow
Our flowers are grown in long rows in our fields, and we "succession plant," or plant numerous types of flowers over and over again during the season, to have a continuous supply of flowers. Some flowers, much like vegetables, will bloom all summer from one planting, others we may only harvest for three or four weeks. After they finish blooming, we pull up the plants, and remove the landscape fabric (weed barrier) and drip irrigation lines. Then we apply organic fertilizer and compost. We lay the drip irrigation and replant the bed with seedlings. This is usually a weekly process! We also grow in high tunnels or unheated greenhouses that are passively heated by the sun, which helps extend our season into early spring and late fall, beyond what we can grow outdoors in our fields. The varieties of flowers planted in each bed are rotated to reduce bug and disease pressure. It is hard work, but we enjoy being part of the growing process from seed to bloom!
