Growing Cut Flowers In A Vineyard
Ep. 96: Companion Planting Cut Flowers in a Vineyard with Jocelyn Bentley-Prestwich of Cluster Flock Farms
On twenty-five acres in Husum, Washington, a flower farmer named Jocelyn Bentley-Prestwich is doing something almost no one else in the cut flower world is doing.
She has tucked peonies, daffodils, German bearded iris, and alliums underneath her grape vines. The result is a four-times increase in the value of every linear foot of her vineyard.
But the practice is only half the reason I wanted to sit down with her.
Jocelyn is a queer female farmer who walked into a male-dominated wine industry that did not make room for her, and she refused to leave. She runs Cluster Flock Farms and Vineyard with her wife Lacy. She raises chickens, ducks, and geese. She grows wine grapes for some of the best winemakers in the Columbia Gorge. And she has spent the last decade quietly proving that the best farms are the ones built by the people who do not quite fit the mold.
A Female Flower Farmer Who Refused to Be Pushed Aside
Jocelyn started in horticulture as a teenager. Her mother is a botanist and her father is an organic chemist, and she grew up surrounded by science. She studied viticulture. She has been in plants her entire life.
And still, when she moved to the Columbia Gorge in 2014 and started farming grapes, she walked into a wine industry built without her in mind.
She was looked over. Talked over. She would stand next to a male contractor and watch the customer talk to him as if he were the owner of the business, until he had to gesture toward her and say, “talk to her.” She got the famous compliment so many of us get when we are women working with our hands: “you are good for a girl.”
And in those moments, the thing that kept her in this work was the line she now carries quietly with her:
“Tell me I can’t, and I will show you that I can.”
The United Nations declared 2026 the International Year of the Female Farmer. There is a reason. Women are doing this work everywhere, and we have not been seen.
Regenerative Flower Farming, Underneath the Vines
One of the most clever practices on her farm is something I have never seen anyone else do.
Underneath her grape vines, in the strip of ground she would otherwise have to keep mowed or weeded, she has planted peonies, daffodils, German bearded iris, alliums, sedum, and Japanese anemones. Each one is tall enough to fill the space and short enough not to interfere with the grapes hanging down.
The result is a four-times increase in the value of every linear foot of vineyard.
The flowers and the grapes share the same water requirements. They share the same foliar spray inputs. They bloom at different times, so they do not compete for harvest energy. And the soil underneath is alive in a way it never was when it was just being mowed.
This is what regenerative flower farming actually looks like. Not a marketing word. A practice. A way of asking the land to do more by asking the land to do less.
What the Hot Mess Has to Teach Us
For years, Jocelyn called her farm Blue Elk Farms. She never loved the name. Neither did her wife. They sat with it for years, waiting for something better.
And then one day in a burst of farm chaos, she muttered, “this is a complete cluster…” and the word that followed was the one that lit the bulb. Grapes grow in clusters. Animals come in flocks. Her kids run wild on the property like a small flock all of their own. The mess was the brand.
Cluster Flock Farms.
She told me she has feral children who run the place, that it is a hot mess all the time, that all farms are hot messes, and that the moment she stopped pretending otherwise was the moment everything fell into place.
I want to invite you to consider something this season. What if the hot mess is the point? What if the laundry baskets in the corner of your house are not a failure of organization but a sign that you are doing the only kind of farming there actually is, the kind that asks everything of you?
What if the imperfection is the proof you are doing it for real?
What Jocelyn Would Tell the Woman She Used to Be
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Jocelyn what she would say to the version of herself from five or ten years ago who did not quite yet know if she belonged here.
She paused. Then she said:
“I would remind her that she had never been in one place for this long before. And that just because it isn’t happening as fast as I want it to doesn’t mean it won’t.”
This is the line I have not been able to shake.
I think about the women I know in this industry, the ones who are wondering if they planted the wrong things, scaled too fast, scaled too slow, said yes to too much, or said no when they should have said yes. The ones who feel buried in a season that is supposed to be full of growth.
And I keep going back to what Jocelyn said. Even when you are buried, your roots are still building community. Sometimes the growth you cannot see is the only growth that matters.
You are not behind. You are rooting.
The Invitation
This episode is publishing during Pride Month, and Jocelyn shares openly about what it took to find a safe place to raise her family in the Gorge as a queer couple, and how she has built Cluster Flock into a welcoming home for other queer farmers. She hosts queer-friendly Woofers. She throws an annual queer fundraiser called Crush the Patriarchy that raises money for her local Pride organization and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. She has spent the last decade making this farm a place where queer growers can show up as themselves.
If you are a queer farmer reading this, please hear me. You belong in this work. There is room for you here.
If you are a female flower farmer, or a regenerative grower, or a small farmer trying to do this work in a community that does not always make room for you, please hear this:
You are enough. You belong here. There is room for all of us. And there is more room beneath the soil than you can see.
Listen To This Episode
Listen to the full conversation with Jocelyn on the Backyard Bouquet Podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And then forward it to another farmer who needs to hear it.
Guest Bio
Jocelyn Bentley-Prestwich is the owner of Cluster Flock Farms and Vineyard in Husum, Washington. She has been stewarding twenty-five acres in the Columbia Gorge since 2014 alongside her wife Lacy. Raised by a botanist mother and an organic chemist father, Jocelyn has been in plants her entire professional life. She started in horticulture as a teenager, worked in garden design and at-risk-youth education in the San Francisco Bay Area, and made her way to the Pacific Northwest with a long list of land requirements and a dream of building something diverse and regenerative. Today she grows Tempranillo, Gewurztraminer, Muscat, and Syrah grapes for Gorge winemakers, runs flower subscriptions, an a la carte wedding florals business, and a flower stand on Highway 141. She is a queer farmer, a mother, and a self-described nerd who believes everything is connected.
Connect With Jocelyn
- Website: https://clusterflockfarms.com
- Instagram: @clusterflockflowers
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