Big dreams come true for girl at Sunny Hill Flower Farm

By Kyle Mooty

LPR Editor

By the age of 10, Kathryn DeLadunatey had already grown up with a grandmother who was into planting flowers, as she said, “big time.” She then saw her mother continue the family tradition. “She just planted and planted and planted.”

Born in Michigan and spending a short time in Tennessee, DeLadunatey was still quite young when she had an epiphany.

“I was like, ‘You know what? What if we started a business doing this?’” DeLadunatey asked her family.

SHE WAS 10!

Arranging flowers in a bouquet was where she became hooked.

Now, having spent most of her life in Texas, DeLadunatey is not only seeing her dreams come true, but she gets to wake up each day to live them over and over.

“Little did I know that about 10 years or so later I would get into flower farming,” DeLadunatey said of her Sunny Hill Flower Farm south of Lockhart. ““Planting was in our history. When I was growing up in Tennessee in this big Victorian farmhouse with rock walls and big trees, it didn’t matter if sometimes things didn’t grow. I wanted to do something with floral history, and then came across flower farming because it’s kind of gotten more popular over the past five years.”

At the family farm, DeLadunatey is in her element, getting her hands in the earth daily as she nurtures her rows and rows of flowers.

“About 80 percent of flowers are imported, so there’s been a huge drive to make U.S.-grown flowers and not so commercially grown,” she said. “There’s a lot of chemicals on the flowers we see in the grocery stores that aren’t even allowed in the U.S., but they can be sprayed on these flowers outside of the U.S. There’s a lot of harsh stuff put on those flowers.”

While still learning how to grow correctly, DeLadunatey realized there was another issue.

“I thought, well, how am I gonna get customers?” she asked. “So, at 16 or17, I thought I would just start knocking on every business door I could find. I went into Luling and into Lockhart and I went door to door. I started supplying some banks in the area,… weekly customers… then got hired to do some wedding events. I started teaching some in-person classes. We teach classes at the library in Luling.

“Last June, I thought, I want to open the farm for people to cut their own flowers. I was inspired to do that and wanted people to get in contact with the flowers. A lot of flower farms don’t even let you come visit. To promote that, I decided to host an event and have vendors, live music, and food.”

In July 2023, DeLadunatey had her first Market at the Farm Ag Weekend farm with 15 vendors, a local musician, barbecue, families and about 200 people.

She plans on having it again, May 10-11, lasting both Friday and Saturday from 3-8 p.m. Only this year, DeLadunatey is hoping to get close to 30 vendors from all over Texas. She may even have professionals showing off their different traits, such as a Blacksmith. She said there will be food trucks, including one with ice cream. Also, there will be musicians from Dallas, Lampasas, and Austin.

She considered the event for the entire family.

“It’s really meant for families to come and stay,” she said. “It’s really meant for them to enjoy the evening and enjoy the Texas spring as a family and experience a flower farm.”

DeLadunatey said many guests come for both days, eat dinner and allow their kids to run around and enjoy the farm life. There will be a petting zoo and visitors can cut flowers, too.

Beginning April 19, DeLadunatey will be open each Friday from 5-7 p.m. for people to come and cut their own flowers.

Admission is free, but parking is $5.

“I have a booth and they pay $20 to cut their own flowers,” she said. “We give ‘em a vase and scissors and show them how to cut the flowers, strip the leaves and such. They’d go out in the fields and arrange their own flowers, which is really cool.”

Vendors and others have told DeLadunatey they have never been to an event such as Market at the Farm Ag Weekend because it is so unique.

Her parents, Michelle and Charles, are her biggest supporters.

“I definitely owe everything to them because they gave me the ability to do this and encourage me… and allow me to use the property,” DeLadunatey said. “A lot of things are built through the community, too. We work together. I’ve had so many neighbors who have been in agriculture their whole life help me, loaning equipment, teach me what the land needs, what to do for soil prep, and stuff like that.”

Sunny Hill Flower Farm sells fresh cut flowers at 512-900-1041, trying to keep deliveries within an hour’s drive. The business web site is Sunny-hill-flower-farm.com.

Sunny Hill Flower Farm supplies Lockhart’s Good Things Grocery with flowers.

She hopes to get the most for her vendors while they are at Market at the Farm Ag Weekend.

She also has her grandmother in mind with each flower raised at Sunny Hill Flower Farm.

On her story on the website, DeLadunatey noted that her grandmother provided these words of wisdom:

“If your plant isn’t happy… move it, and keep moving it until it is in a place where it is happy and growing well.” 

Now immersed in Texas, DeLadunatey said she has no plans to live anywhere else.

“I say the more you’re in this soil, you get your blood, sweat and tears into this and it becomes your home,” she said. “I think it gives a whole new level of attachment to the land because your hands are in the land and you’re out there every single day.

“I’m a Christian and I do believe nature is a beautiful thing. We all need to get out into it. It’s God’s creation. It adds a lot of value and that’s why we get joy from it. A lot of people always ask me, ‘Why are you always so happy? It must be because you’re around flowers.’ But flowers are not easy to grow. They’re one of the hardest things. I have no idea why I’m still doing it. Every day there’s some kind of tragic infestation or issue, but I give all the credit to God knowing that he’s in control. If this is what I’m supposed to be doing, he’ll give me the ability to keep doing it.”