Wisconsin Perennial Flower Farm
Heritage Flower Farm is an award-winning boutique nursery growing heirloom plants, finding their stories and spreading them to gardens from Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian & Canada’s Royal Botanic Garden, to backyard gardens like yours. Then-93 year old Anne Patterson inspired the new farm owner, Betty Adelman, to follow her heart for antique flowers.
Our passion for heirloom plants comes from these principles:
They are plants with a past, not just petals in all hues and foliage of green textures. They heard the dawn of history, the Europe of Elizabeth I, Louis of multiple numbers, Siberia of the Cossacks or a Middle Eastern empire under Suleiman the Magnificent. They witnessed America before John Smith sailed up the James River in Virginia or Meriwether Lewis and John Clark crossed the western continent.
They are plants with stories, not just perfumes or sweet, pearl-like buds. They tell us how inventive early people made them into food, clothing, housing, medicine and articles of love. They narrate the tales of their discoveries by intrepid plant hunters who gave up creature comforts for the unknown or paid with their lives to snatch just one more flower from the wilderness.
They are the plants of our heritage. Thomas Jefferson grew many at Monticello swapping seeds with Mme de Tesse in Paris. Perhaps your grandmother planted and tended a garden of flowers
They are plants with wildlife values, feeding their bird and insect companions to maintain abundant biodiversity. Providing nectar to hummingbirds and butterflies, seeds, habitat & berries to sustain native birds, they enhance colors and movement in our gardens.
They are tough survivors. If we give them the conditions of their home places they will thrive with little care. It means we adapt our garden to their needs, not asking plants to adapt to a monoculture of our wants.
Heritage Flower Farm in Mukwonago, Wisconsin grows more than 1000 varieties of heirloom plants in acres of fields and in our gardens. We welcome people to come and wander in the wonder of nature.