Though Anna Jane Kocon didn’t set out to become a flower farmer, it’s a profession that, in retrospect, feels like a natural marriage of her skills and lifestyle.
Kocon, owner and founder of Little State Flower Co. in Tiverton, has had an eye for aesthetics for as long as she can remember. Prior to opening the specialty-cut flower farm in 2014, she worked as an arts instructor at local colleges but sought to supplement her work during academia’s slower summer months.
“I just wanted to be outside and be physical,” she recalled. “It was the summer, and I’ve always been a very physical person, an athlete. And I’ve always been a creative person – I built my career around the fine arts.”
All that considered, Kocon said, it’s not too far-fetched that flower farming felt like a natural fit.
“Even though it’s beautiful, it’s still mud, rain, heat, bugs, agriculture,” Kocon said. “It’s all very physical, but what I grow is completely aesthetic based.”
Eighteen years since taking her first job as a farmhand, Kocon has now spent a decade owning and running her own farming operation.
Prior to opening Little State Flower Co., Kocon took a job at Eva’s Garden in Dartmouth, a 3-acre organic farm specializing in herbs, greens and flowers. Going into the job, Kocon expected to mostly cultivate plants like kale or arugula.
Instead, she was assigned to tend to the farm’s edible flowers, like mint, sage, marigolds and dahlias – essentially, any type of flower that isn’t toxic and may be eaten or used as a garnish.
“That is really where I had the moment that the entire trajectory of my life changed,” Kocon said. “People say you get bit by the farming bug, and I really did.”
Kocon continued to sharpen her farming skills at Eva’s Garden for five years, then went on to manage Robin Hollow Farm in North Kingstown. Unlike Eva’s, which had a culinary focus, Robin Hollow exclusively farmed cut flowers.
“I honed the production skills and learned how to make money, how to estimate yield and how much to plant,” Kocon said.
By 2014, Kocon was prepared to open and run her own flower farm, initially leasing 3 acres in Tiverton and marketing exclusively to florists. She purchased the property about five years later and expanded it by another 2 acres.
Given Rhode Island’s prominence as a wedding destination, Kocon said, the state had a seemingly endless supply of florists to work with. But Kocon had to start from the ground up in cultivating farmland. She established the Tiverton farm at a property that she described as “an invasive forest growing over a bunch of cars.”
Looking at the rows of flowers that now dominate that site, or customers buzzing around its popular farmstand, it’s hard to imagine the property in its former disarray.
That farmstand, which Kocon set up on the corner of the property in 2020, “changed everything in terms of the trajectory of how I’m selling my flowers,” she said, noting that the retail side of the business has proven more profitable and efficient than the farm’s wholesale roots.
Kocon won’t abandon her work with florists, she says, but isn’t looking to expand that side of the business as she hones her business model on retail.
With the exception of a roughly six-week break during the holiday season, Kocon’s small team farms year-round, growing hundreds upon hundreds of flower varieties, including hydrangeas, foxgloves, anemones, tulips, zinnias and dahlias.
OWNER: Anna Jane Kocon
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Specialty-cut flower farm
LOCATION: 487 East Road, Tiverton
EMPLOYEES: Five currently (varies seasonally)
YEAR FOUNDED: 2014
ANNUAL REVENUE: WND
