No wiggle room: How Salt Air Farm masters wedding day precision

“I think one of the reasons that weddings have the reputation for being so stressful for people is because there are not very many moments in life that you absolutely have no wiggle room with regards to timing. A wedding starts at a specific time and everything has got to be there, ready to go and looking perfect at that moment. There are no exceptions for that,” said flower farmer Prudence Wickham Heston, co-owner of Salt Air Farm in Cutchogue, NY, on the North Fork of Long Island.

It’s Heston’s job to make sure that the flowers are there, looking perfect, no matter what. However, she prefers to call them “event stems” because although she grows a multitude of cut flowers (annuals and perennials), much of what she uses in her arrangements don’t fall into the typical cut flower category: greenery, grasses, grains, vines and even fruits and vegetables.

During the main wedding season, Heston harvests stems for four to eight weddings per weekend. Some are destined for full-service weddings with Heston and her crew responsible for arranging and installation – everything from a flower girl bonnet ringed in colorful blooms to the bridal and bridesmaids’ bouquets to the wedding arch.

Another wedding party might have opted for the hybrid option. With this, Heston arranges the personal bouquets and special arrangements, and the wedding party uses buckets of pre-cut stems from the farm to produce their own table arrangements. Then there’s the DIY option, where wedding parties purchase wholesale flowers and take full control of the design. On top of that, she sells stems to local florists who are also in the wedding event industry.

A flawless wedding day demands the coordination of farming, arranging and marketing with a tremendous level of organization. Heston said, “If you’re not a super-duper organized person, this is not going to work for you.”

Heston structures her week around what she calls “weather efficiency,” which means she encourages her clients to make contact on a rainy day rather than a prime farming day. She explains to clients that her number one priority is making their flowers turn out beautiful, which requires full focus on the farming side. Heston is also an uber-planner when it comes to planting to ensure that she’s able to match her plantings with her sales and ensure stems are harvested in the right colors at the right time.

Staying on top of color trends is also important; Heston tracks these trends one to two years ahead, noting that most brides in a given year want the same colors.

She is also very conscious about how to use seasonal substitutions to achieve the wedding couple’s desired look. For example, if she wants to make sure she has the baby’s breath look throughout the whole season, she has a succession of substitutes including beach plum, angel’s breath, wild quinine and Baccharis.

Communication is also a key to Heston’s success. Most of her clientele, which she described as a self-selecting group since they are seeking out flowers sourced directly from a farm, understand that Heston is juggling the farmer and florist roles. Still, she is careful to communicate and manage expectations with every client. Before any consultation begins, she requires the couple (and the people funding the wedding) to be present. According to Heston, budget is the most important detail to establish at the outset. Once she knows the budget, she can then put together a quote. Because all the arrangements are custom and seasonal rather than packaged, she is clear about what is and is not available at a given time of year and communicates seasonal substitutions.

Heston credits her crew – two full-time and five part-time employees – for pulling off successful weddings. She explained that most people assume the floral wedding industry requires a large staff, but her experience has shown that fewer employees leads to better outcomes.

She said, “Too many people basically kill your efficiency and it also makes it so that you can’t find the tools that you need when the big moment comes. And it also kills your bottom line.”

Heston frequently has people with arranging skills inquire about work, but she prefers versatility in an employee: one who can perform the full spectrum of tasks, from planting to arranging to working at the top of a ladder during an installation to physically lugging buckets at the end of a long day.

Finally, Heston cites pre- and post-harvest practices as a key to Salt Air’s successful wedding business. Bucket washing is a non-negotiable practice. She said, “When we’re training folks around here, we tell them that if you can’t drink out of that bucket, it isn’t good enough to be picking into.” This cleanliness standard ensures that stems hold well.

Appropriate water temperature is another practice Heston is a stickler for. Staff are trained to understand the individual requirements of each stem type rather than applying a universal approach. This specificity holds true for what kind of vessel a stem requires and how they are handled post-harvest. Some stems need to go into the cooler immediately after picking, while others do not. Staff must know the difference.

Weed management is also linked to stem quality, and Heston relies on cover crops – rye, wheat, sorghum, oats, buckwheat and grass – for weed control.

With meticulous planning, thoughtful communication and a dependable crew, Heston proves it’s possible to produce, arrange and market wedding blooms. However, she cautions that it isn’t for everyone and encourages potential growers to ask themselves what really turns them on: floral design or farming.

“If the farming is a means to an end to get the flowers, my recommendation is not to take this on because it is so much cheaper to just go and buy the flowers from somebody else who’s doing the farming,” she said. “The farming end of it is really expensive and really hard to balance with all of the sales that go along with this and the floral design piece.”

by Sonja Heyck-Merlin