Landscape designer and flower farmer Elise Freda is best known for cultivating spectacular dahlias and other summertime blooms in the fields at Crooked Barn Flower Farm. As the holiday season approaches, however, she shifts her focus to winter floral arrangements, creating elegant decorations for her home using fresh greenery foraged from around her Kingston property.

Armed with a pair of garden pruners, Freda collects pine, boxwood, holly and juniper branches and clips delicate sprigs of globe amaranth, which grows in the fields right up until the first frost.

“Globe amaranth dries very well and keeps its color for a long time,” says Freda, pointing to several bunches of the crimson flowers hanging upside down at the back of her barn workshop. Well stocked with decorative urns and vases, the historic barn serves as the headquarters for her burgeoning cut flower business and pumps out beautiful bouquets in spring, summer and fall for floral subscribers across the South Shore. 

“I’ve always been into the environment and growing things,” says Freda, who attended an agricultural high school and studied landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She went on to work as a landscape designer before establishing her flower farm business five years ago.

Freda holds floral design workshops several times a year and often teams up with Kimberly Russo, proprietor, chef and floral designer at Just Right Farm in Plympton.

Together, the duo create unforgettable events. Most recently, they hosted an afternoon of holiday decorating and desserts where guests enjoyed delicious sweet and savory bites prepared by Russo and participated in a hands-on evergreen yule ball tutorial led by Freda.

“Everyone has their station and we usually have a flower bar set up with materials,” says Freda, who likes to use a combination of natural elements and decorative ornaments when making yule balls. “It’s a fun project and so gratifying once it’s done.”