Owner of Three Little Buds Flowers Joanna Webb is pictured here with some of her vibrantly colored, sweet-smelling blossoms. / Photo courtesy Joanna Webb BUCKHANNON – A Buckhannon resident has carefully cultivated and tended to one of her favorite hobbies, and that hobby has now sprouted into a side business for her – quite literally.

Three Little Buds owner Joanna Webb, who is a chemistry professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College, talked to My Buckhannon from her beautiful gardens, located around her home in downtown Buckhannon.

Webb said this is her fourth official growing season, but she has been growing flowers for a long, long time. She said her husband jokingly told her she could not grow any more flowers until she took part of her bounty to a local florist to see if they would be interesting in purchasing some of her blossoms. A market-style bouquet of flowers grown and arranged by local flower grower Joanna Webb. / Photo courtesy Joanna Webb “I had always kicked around the idea of selling flowers to local florists,” Webb said. “So, I took some of my dahlias to Anita’s Flowers of Buckhannon, and they told me they would love to buy local flowers.”

She said she learned on the fly about growing flowers and started growing ones she found most beautiful.

“I like the market bouquet-style of flowers,” Webb said. “With COVID coming in when most of the flowers were blooming, most of the florists were closed, and I had all of these flowers, so I offered subscriptions for monthly or twice a month bouquets, and I was overwhelmed.”

Webb said her business is evolving and expanding, and so is her growing area.

“Three Little Buds is named after my kiddos, who are two, five and seven,” Webb said. “I just love growing things and want to grow flowers for my community.”

Webb said she feels the flowers she grows lend themselves to wedding work, noting Anita’s Flowers is a perfect fit because they often provide bouquets and other floral décor for weddings. An example of the arrangements Three Little Buds Flowers offers. / Photo courtesy Joanna Webb “Last year, I took flowers to Tammy’s Bridal and Floral in Elkins and JoJo’s in Elkins, but this year I have been too busy in Buckhannon to even think about taking flowers to Elkins,” she said. “That is a good problem.”

Some of the flowers Webb grows – she said she starts cultivating her crop in the spring – are those typically not found in a supermarket bouquet and include specialty tulips, anemones and Ranunculus.

“I get into flowers like Snapdragons, feverfew, Sweet William, specialty varieties of black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia, yarrow, Statice, Veronica, Calendula, basils as fillers, Zinnias, Cosmos, sunflowers and more,” she said. “I am trying to get flowers for all seasons to make bouquets with.”

She said she chose these because flowers in supermarket bouquets are shipped in from other countries and travel far distances, meaning they don’t always have much of pleasing scent.

“I am trying to grow unique heirloom varieties […]