How a Covenant graduate turned her placelessness into a budding business in Flintstone

Morgan Sharpe's greenhouse, where some of Creekside Flower Farm's many flowers are grown.
Morgan Sharpe's greenhouse, where some of Creekside Flower Farm's many flowers are grown.

It was in the midst of a Super Bowl watch party last year that Morgan Sharpe decided what she wanted to do with her life: begin a flower farm.

"I was watching the game and scrolling through greenhouse options on Pinterest," she said.

A little more than a year later, Sharpe operates Creekside Flower Farm out of a farm in Flintstone where she originally moved in 2015 as part of the Chattanooga Fellows program, a faith-based program she was working with to translate texts into Spanish.

But how the Covenant graduate went from being a psychology degree-holder working as a translator, to a flower farmer is more a result of her early years as the daughter of missionaries traveling across Central America.

"It left me with this sense of placelessness. I had homes - I had multiple homes in different countries - but there was this sense of placelessness," she said.

As she began to think about how to make her own place within the city that welcomed her, first as a Covenant student and then as a part of the Fellows program, she found the inspiration for what ultimately became a much bigger endeavor. While living on the Flintstone farm, Sharpe told the farm owner about her years-old desire to have a little green space filled with windows where she could spend her time.

That desire grew as the farm owner encouraged her to grow flowers of her own, creating a complementing business to the farm's already existing wedding venue, The Barn at High Point Farms.

Sharpe took a course offered by Co.Starters for aspiring entrepreneurs in downtown Chattanooga, then competed for financing through a Covenant grant competition for graduates.

"I was competing for literal seed funding," she said.

When she won $2,500 in November, the concept grew from a dream to a reality.

Sharpe is now selling her first year's flowers, both to brides who utilize the farm for its wedding space and as a weekly flower subscription service for the general public. She also occasionally hosts pop-up sales at Niedlov's Bakery on Main Street and other locations.

"Now I'm in full swing," she said.

"Everybody loves flowers and everybody loves beauty," she added, "but I also want to reconnect people to the idea of being connected to the land. I think there is a lot of power to belonging to a place and knowing the people and the land."

To learn more about Creekside Flower Farm, visit creeksideflowerfarm.com and follow the business on Instagram and Facebook, where pop-up sales are announced.

photo Through her new business Creekside Flower Farm, Morgan Sharpe offers flowers for weddings and other special events, as well as a flower subscription service that delivers bouquets to subscribers weekly.

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