Grow Your Own Way at Painted Tulip

Long before Melissa Bounty was fielding the desks of Central Vermont Economic Development Corp., she was tending the fields alongside one of her lifelong friends, Nicole D’Agata of Waterbury’s flower farm and event florist, Painted Tulip.

Nicole on her farm with dahlias she grew

Nicole’s early professional background was in painting. She attended Hampshire College and then received her painting MFA from Boston College. After touring the world on painting fellowships, Nicole landed in Vermont, where she began making moves to work with the primary subjects of her paintings: flowers. I was also an art student at the time, and one day my studio arts model yelled into the crowd painting her form, “Anyone want to work at my flower farm?”

I sold Nicole’s cut flowers intermittently as a college student as she grew her farm and her event floral business. Her values and her lessons learned are worth the read at her blog of many years.

Melissa at Stowe Farmer’s market, 20 years or so ago :)

I learned a lot from Nicole: how to affix a boutonnière, how to haggle at a farmer’s market, how to set up a pop up tent as one person, how to grow a dahlia as big as a dinner plate, and how to style a wedding headed for Town & Country magazine. Plus enough stories about chickens to make an entire documentary film.

But what I admired most about Nicole in 20 years of knowing her and her business, was how to stay true to your beliefs. She has conquered farm life as a single female farmer, fighting against Vermont’s rocky soil, bitter cold, short growing season, flooding, and even triumphed over cancer in her years brightening people’s lives and weddings with her luscious blooms.

Throughout it all, Nicole remained true to her beliefs that beautiful flowers could be produced while respecting our planet and its land. She advocates for buying local, explaining how international flower markets can harm climates and people. She is passionate about the Association for Specialty Cut Flower Growers and she shares the knowledge of her 20 years in flower farming widely and illustratively for new and burgeoning growers.

Although I officially stopped assisting Nicole with events, farm work, bookkeeping and/or marketing back in 2012, I’ll always appreciate the years I spent checking in and learning how much heart and soul goes into one beautiful blossom. Thanks Nicole, for working so hard to bring beauty into this world.