Unwind and Relax: Lavender Essential Oil Perfume Roll-Ons

In the fast-paced, sometimes overstimulating world we live in, finding moments of peace, tranquility and relaxation can be a challenge. Enter lavender essential oil, a natural aromatic remedy known for its ability to calm the mind and soothe the soul. In this blog post, we'll explore how our lavender essential oil perfume roll-ons can become your portable relaxation companion, offering serenity, peace, and the wonderful fragrance of lavender whenever you need it.

Benefits of Lavender Essential Oil Perfume Roll-On:

Stress Reduction: Lavender essential oil is renowned for its stress-relieving properties. A simple application of a lavender-infused perfume roll-on can help reduce feelings of anxiety and tension, promoting a sense of calmness.

Improved Sleep Quality: Lavender is well-known for its sleep-inducing effects. Applying the lavender essential oil roll-on to your pulse points before bedtime can help create a relaxing bedtime ritual, improving the quality of your sleep.

Enhanced Mood and Well-being: The pleasant aroma of lavender essential oil has mood-lifting capabilities. A quick roll of the perfume on your wrists can boost your spirits, making it an ideal on-the-go aromatherapy solution.

Aid for Headaches and Migraines: Lavender essential oil may help alleviate headaches and migraines. Gently applying the roll-on to your temples and massaging it in can provide a soothing sensation and potentially ease discomfort.

Mindful Relaxation Anytime, Anywhere: The convenience of a roll-on bottle makes it easy to carry lavender essential oil with you wherever you go. Whether you're at work, traveling, or simply out and about, a gentle swipe of the perfume roll-on can offer a moment of relaxation amidst a hectic day.

Natural Aromatherapy for Meditation: Lavender's calming scent makes it an excellent choice for enhancing your meditation practice. Apply the roll-on to your wrists or neck before meditating to create a peaceful and serene atmosphere.

Use the power of lavender essential oil and experience a little piece of tranquility wherever life takes you. A lavender-infused perfume roll-on is more than just a pleasant scent—it's a calming fragrance that can elevate your mood, ease stress, and offer relaxation at any moment. Carry the calming essence of lavender with you and enjoy the peaceful benefits it brings to your daily life.

Creating a Spring Bulb Container Garden

Creating a spring bulb container garden is such a simple way to bring some of the beautiful, early spring blooming flowers to enjoy inside while the weather might not be quite that great. Today, we’ll discuss some of the fun bulbs we force each winter in order to hold classes for attendees to make a spring bulb garden of their own.

Our customers love bulb container gardens, because they are perfect for small spaces, or for those who don't have access to a yard. Also, they’re gorgeous to bring inside to enjoy for a few weeks, before you can turn around and plant them out in your yard. It’s the best of both worlds! Enjoying both fresh flowers and the benefit of planting them to enjoy later.

Daffodils are a classic spring flower that are sure to brighten up any container garden. They come in a variety of colors, including yellow, white, and pink. Daffodils are also one of the easiest bulbs to grow, making them a great option for beginners. We especially love a dwarfed daffodil called Tete a Tete. They’re just perfect for small bulb container gardens.

Tulips are another classic spring flower that are sure to add a pop of color to your container garden. They come in a variety of colors, including red, pink, purple, and white. Tulips also come in a variety of shapes, including single-flowered, double-flowered, and fringed. We especially love double daffodils for our spring bulb container gardens, because they typically stay a little bit shorter than some of the other tulips and have a lovely, subtle fragrance.

Hyacinths are another popular spring flower that come in a variety of colors, including pink, purple, and white. They are known for their strong fragrance, which makes them a great option for container gardens that are close to living spaces. You can’t go wrong with any type of hyacinth, but the bulbs are a little bigger in size, so sticking to just a few for your bulb container garden is a good idea, otherwise you’ll run out of room.

Muscari - Muscari, also known as grape hyacinths, are a popular spring bulb that come in shades of blue, purple, and white. They are known for their grape-like clusters of flowers, which make them a unique addition to any container garden. Adam likes to plant these together in clusters of 3 around the bulb container garden for extra ‘sparkle’.

To top off the bulb garden containers, we love to decoratively adorn with different types of willow. We love curly willow and the gray catkins from standard willow are just gorgeous. Put either/or into the container, or combine both together. You really can’t go wrong!

We also encourage guests to add sphagnum moss, large river rock, or small pea gravel to the top of the bulb container garden. This helps provide a little weight to hold the bulbs in the soil and it provides a pretty decorative addition to complete the look for the garden.

There are so many ways to put together a simple, pretty spring bulb garden and lots of options of bulbs to choose from. From classic flowers like daffodils and tulips, to unique options like muscari, there is something for everyone. Remember to choose bulbs that will thrive in your climate and sunlight conditions, and have fun experimenting with different combinations of flowers!

XX Jenn and Adam

Bouquet Inspiration for Your Cutting Garden

We’re in the midst of large-scale planning our cut flower beds for the 2023 growing season here in Central Iowa, zone 5 As we work on our plan, we always find it useful to look back at our bouquets by season to understand flower combinations we LOVED to make sure we can have those flowers all blooming around the same time to recreate the recipe we used. No need to recreate the wheel, right?!

For someone who might just be starting out, we thought it would be great to share our favorite cut flower bouquet combinations to help inspire possible combinations of flowers to use together, or to even ‘plant a seed’ for some new flowers you might want to try to grow.

Here’s a few of the flower bouquet combinations we LOVE!

Rainbow Wreath Making

Our signature rainbow wreaths have been increasingly popular year over year.

Dried flowers in every color of the rainbow laid upon a nest of fresh evergreens, it really makes those beautiful rainbow colors pop and it smells sooo good! Where did the idea for the rainbow wreath come from? The original idea came from a guest at a wreath making workshop three years ago. She started using dried flowers in various, more random colors in her wreath. They were clustered together, which made the colors pop even more. I took one look at it and it instantly dawned on me that I could use my dried flowers to make an extraordinary rainbow colored wreath. A day or two after the class, I raced to the shop to try and see if I could make my own creation. Sure enough, the rainbow wreath idea turned out perfectly and looked absolutely stunning!

Jenn holds a rainbow wreath in the lavender field with her dog chewy

How do we make the rainbow wreaths? Well, the process starts in the summer when we set aside time to cut fresh flowers for drying, specifically to make the rainbow wreaths. We take an hour each week, usually at the end of the day to go out and cut flowers in bunches of 10 to bring back to hang in our shop.

The flowers usually take around 10 days to dry in our shop area, but they’re stored in there for a few months before we end up using them in the wreaths. Any extra dried flowers are sold at farmer’s market, at specialty shops or in our own farm store.

As you can see, we use the colors of the rainbow. The flowers and citrus included in the wreath are as follows: yellow statice, yellow marigolds, yellow yarrow, orange slices, orange marigolds, red gomphrena, winterberry, dark purple/wine celosia, burgundy Chester Copperpot celosia, purple statice, dark blue larkspur, blue saliva, ruscus, and seeded eucalyptus.

Sometimes these ingredients vary and I’ll use other things to sub in for color, or I’ll only use 1 red item for example, so you can be flexible with what you use for your recipe and how you do your bunches. There’s lots of creative liberties you can take when putting one together.

Rainbow Wreath

What do you think about the rainbow wreath? Worth the hype? Are you encouraged to try to make one of your own? They’re sure to add a modern, cheery touch to the holiday season!

XX Jenn

Glamping on a Flower Farm

It started in 2020 at the request of a couple visiting the farm for one of our popular Al Fresco Dinners with Tangerine Food Company. They told us they would LOVE to come to stay at our flower farm for a unique travel experience (thanks Gilmara!). Later that evening we talked it over a little, then we talked about it for a couple more months past that. We hashed out the the cost/benefit analysis, requirements for building, etc. It’s not the fun or sexy part of business, but it’s definitely necessary. After all of our research and number crunching was completed, we decided to move forward with putting everything in place for Spring 2021, to host flower farm glamping tent stays at PepperHarrow.

That’s when our first ever glamping tent was built on a beautiful, private area of our property with the intention to offer guests a unique flower farm stay experience.

Photo by Aly Carroll

When we first released dates for our glamping stay, we limited available just from Thursday-Sunday. It was our first year hosting and we really wanted to make sure we gave ourselves enough time to clean the tent and change linens in between guests, all while running a full time, thriving flower farm. It was the perfect way to ease into the cadence of hosting guests and running a flower farm.

Any guesses how it all panned out? SPOILER ALERT: It was a total HIT! We spent the summer and fall of 2021 fully booked up each and every weekend. We had the opportunity to meet many wonderful people through our hosting experience and loved all of the positive feedback guests gave us after their stays. After our first year, we achieved designated ‘Super Host’ status on Airbnb. Such a great first year accomplishment!

During the first year we also learned a lot about hosting guests on our farm that weren’t intuitive initially, like how to handle weather when guests are staying in the tent, and other important learnings. Starting with shortened availability really helped us get used to hosting while managing our flower farm as well.

Photo by Aly Carroll

What does a stay look like for guests who stay on our flower farm at the glamping tent?

The inside of the glamping tent comfortably accommodates two people with a large, king sized bed with luxe, soft linens, a small sitting area, chest of drawers, dining table and chairs. The windows inside the tent roll-up, as well as the front door, so there’s tons of opportunity to let in air for a nice cross breeze. On the front of the tent sits a cute bistro table and chairs, so you can sit on the front porch to enjoy a Madison County sunrise, or appreciate the lush, green landscape.

Outside is even more setup for living space! There’s a shaded special spot to the side, which has a small cooking setup: outside cook stove, grill and a small space for basic washing. There’s a hammock for relaxing, a fire pit area setup with a stack of firewood, and Adirondack chairs with a small table to enjoy an evening by a campfire.

Photo by Aly Carroll

Bathhouse accommodations are provided inside of our newly constructed event barn, located roughly 1 minute from the glamping tent by vehicle, or a 3-5 minute walk. Restroom facilities, with a hot water shower is available inside the bathhouse with towels, and basic wash essentials available. This isn’t the most glamorous thing to talk about, but so necessary to complete a perfect glamping stay.

A glamping stay at the flower farm is meant to be a quiet escape into the countryside, where you can energize your spirit and connect back with the land, but if you’re feeling adventurous, we also highly recommend guests explore the wonderful sites and scenes of Madison County.

Home to the famed Bridges of Madison County, you can make a whole trip out of visiting each of the covered bridges, as well as other local attractions. Once inside the glamping tent, you can find a list of our favorite places to eat, drink, grab a cup of coffee and other great local ‘must see’ places.

Photo by Aly Carroll

Even though the glamping tent is wonderful, it’s not even the highlight of the stay. Guests have unlimited access to our 20 acre flower farm. We welcome guests to walk our flower fields, take photos, and even to cut a bouquet to take home. There are roughly 8.5 acres of flower gardens to explore and enjoy, which many guests take advantage of.

Our 2.5 acres of lavender are made up of three distinctly separated beds, each dedicated for specific uses: essential oil, culinary, and simply to enjoy! The lavender fields are usually in bloom from mid-June through mid-July, but even when they’re not blooming, the fragrance from these beautiful plants are incredible. Need a nap in the lavender? Help yourself!

Can you just imagine yourself relaxing and enjoying a glamping experience at our flower farm?

XO Jenn and Adam

PepperHarrow Glamping Tent Tour