After the death of her grandmother, local Rachel Ross bought a small piece of land to grow and sell flowers. With a background in horticulture, Rachel knew how to make good use of the quarter acre of land she bought in Stevensville. She named her new flower farm “SunKissed Flower Farm.” “I did it sort of impulsively,” Rachel told me. “But with all our recent growth everything seems to have fallen into place.”

There are a wide variety of benefits to using locally grown flowers. For the environmentally conscious, locally grown flowers have a much smaller carbon footprint than flowers that are flown in from other parts of the country or even parts of the world. SunKissed Flower Farm also avoids applying pesticides and chemicals to their flowers. “The flowers you buy from the store contain on average 37 pesticides… These chemicals can affect workers, customers and pollinators,” Rachel explained to me. Sunkissed’s locally grown and chemical-free flowers also last longer. Rachel’s customers even say that her locally grown flowers often last a week longer than flowers they’ve bought elsewhere.

Spread across a few dozen flower beds, Rachel grows over a hundred different types of flowers every year; with different varieties of flowers being grown depending on the season. Because everything is grown here in Maryland, she can grow flowers that thrive locally that you normally cannot find in the store.

SunKissed also has a subscription service for flower lovers. They deliver fresh cut flower arrangements on a biweekly or monthly basis. They offer seasonal cut flowers as well as their popular tulip packages available early in the year. “We deliver what is blooming at the time so you never know what you’re going to get,” Rachel told me. They deliver flowers from Kent Island to Queenstown.

If you would like to learn more about SunKissed Flower Farm or see what flowers they have, you can go to their website here: https://www.sunkissedflowerfarm.com/. You can also find them at local events like the Kent Island Farmers’ Market located at Cult Classic and at Everything Market located at the Kent Island American Legion. Check the web site for the market schedule days/dates and times. Remember to Shop Local at SunKissed Flower Farm where flowers are “Grown Not Flown.”