Denise Glanzer

How it all began…

I have always loved flowers and gardening. I think I get that from my mom. She always had a beautiful garden at our home in Webster Groves, Missouri. It was filled with beautiful hosta plants, impatients, flowering plants and flowering trees. Our yard was always the prettiest on the block! My mom’s garden was just as beautiful as she is.

My love for flowers grew…

So, as an adult, I always wanted a pretty garden, only I wanted mine to be filled with beautiful flowers that I could cut and bring into the house. There is nothing I love more than fresh beautiful flowers-especially the kind that have a beautiful fragrance! (Like roses and lilacs!) My favorite flower is a peony…I love the beautiful big blooms and the fragrant smell. Peonies, hydrangeas and lilacs… So, at each house, I have always planted a cutting garden.

A few years ago, as I was cutting the flowers and bringing them in I had a realization… I realized that flowers are my true passion. They are what makes me happy. They are the gift I have that I want to share with others. But I didn’t really know the 1st thing about operating a floral business… and how would I make it unique?

Life Changing Things Happened!

I am a big lover (aka time waster) of Instagram, and I follow a lot of people and companies that feature beautiful flowers on their pages. One of the pages I follow is @Floretflower. It is owned by Erin Benzakein. She has a beautiful farm in Skagit Valley, Washington. She started her farm on 1 acre of land….and produces enough flowers to sell to wholesalers and the local farmers markets. She also does weddings and workshops and writes books…she’s one of those “I can do anything and do it well kind of people” even if she doesn’t do it well it always appears that she does! She openly admits that it took a lot of trial and error to get where she is today and that we can all learn from her mistakes. The pages of her Instagram and her books are filled with beautiful cut flowers… huge blooms of tulips, dahlias, roses, zinnias and more… just about any cut flower you can imagine. I started to follow Erin and discovered she offers a 12 week all inclusive course on how to start a flower farm. It wasn’t cheap, but it included everything you need to know on how to become a flower farmer. So, with the support of my husband Bill, who grew up on a farm, I decided that if I wanted to become a flower farmer, the best way was to jump in and learn everything I could!

The 2nd thing that happened, happened while I was taking the Floret Flower Farm course. The course asks you a lot of questions about what you want to do with your flower business once you get started. Do you want to sell to wholesalers? Do you want to do weddings? Do you want to share your flowers with friends and family? How will you be unique? It really got me thinking… I have always loved the idea of a flower stand… like the ones you see in New York City or on the streets of Italy. I have also always loved the vintage Ford pickup trucks that are photographed at Christmas time with the Christmas trees in the back. Erin’s book features a beautiful picture of the bed of a truck filled with beautiful blooms… I thought to myself… that’s it! I can sell my flowers from the back of a truck… a mobile flower business! I immediately started looking on EBAY for the perfect truck… I searched all kinds of trucks, from old Ford trucks, to Chevy’s and even an old Econoline. But then I saw Betty!!!!… and she was BEAUTIFUL! I found her in California and immediately started communicating with the seller. We purchased Betty within the week! She was shipped to our house in January of 2020.

My husband, Bill, renovated Betty and created a beautiful flower truck. We started doing pop up events all over town, but our favorite place to pop up was in downtown Parkville. I absolutely LOVE Parkville, and I wanted it to be Betty’s forever home.

That’s when Life changing #3 Happened… A storefront opened up on Main Street! And it was one with serious potential to be the store of my dreams with the cute little black and white awning and the tin ceilings. The perfect space for a floral and gift shop!

We began to fill it with all of things we love and look for when we shop for gifts! There is a little something for everyone in our shop. We offer baby gifts, gifts for mom, dad, kids, you name it! And if you can’t find something there is always our beautiful handmade chocolates!”

We offer beautiful floral arrangements for all occasions…Anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, funerals, corsages and boutonnieres…PLUS we are a full service gift shop as well offering all kinds of gifts!

We often offer floral workshops so keep an eye out on our website. Also, everything we sell in store is also available online at our website www.whitefarmhouseflowers.com