Famed Floral Educator Buys Farm For Truly Experiential Classes

What could be dreamier than a stay at a bed and breakfast on a Virginia farm?

What if it had a focus on floral design?

Get excited: Holly Heider Chapple, a renowned event florist and floral educator, recently purchased 25 acres of farmland just down the road from her home in Leesburg, Virginia.

“I’d been watching the property for three years,” Chapple said. “I was looking for a place where I could teach and grow and offer my students a destination experience.”

(Since 2010, Chapple has flown across the globe, leading workshops. Her pupils are known as “Chapel Designers.”)

Chapple settled on the name “Hope Farm” in honor of the family that worked on it for more than 60 years.

“I thought it only fitting,” she said. “I wanted something meaningful and sentimental — that’s just how I roll. I also like that the name implies so much potential.”

Hope Farm includes a large stone manor house, a 3-bedroom tenant house, a machine shed and two barns.

The roomy barns make fantastic classrooms and work stations, while the manor “is so fabulous for styling and photography,” she said. “The house will always be full of flowers and all the books in it are about floral design.”

Together, the tenant house and manor housecan “comfortably” fit seven to 10 people, “but I can imagine 22 or so Chapel Designers coming at once and staying up all night talking,” Chapel said. “It’s going to be hopping!”

In addition to offering Chapel Designers an inviting getaway, Chapple plans to open the farm up to the local community.

“It’s impactful for them to see where flowers are grown and how we design them,” she said. She has dreams of one day hosting festivals for holidays and various growing seasons (sunflowers, lilacs, peonies, etc.).

She also anticipates requests from brides to use Hope Farm for destination weddings, but says that’s not her main focus.

“I’m allowed to have up to 20 a year and I’m sure we will be asked,” she said. “But I’d rather Hope not become a full-on wedding venue. I really want to focus on the growing and the retreat feeling of the farm.”