This story was originally published by The Telegraph.
On a patch of farmland that’s been in her family for four generations, Perry native Samantha Lineberger planted flower seeds that blossomed into a thriving agritourism business in under a year.
For $15, visitors to Arena Acres can fill up a red Solo cup with flowers they pick. She provides the cup, water and clippers.
“When you come out here, you get to experience God’s beauty … being outside, enjoying the fresh air,” Lineberger said. “We have a lot of kids and families that come out here and kids can just run and be kids and have fun.”
What to expect
Visitors who want to come and walk along the rows of flowers or take photos are welcome. There’s no admission charge.
For the flower pickers, there’s no stem limit — just as long as the stems fit into the cup, Lineberger said.
“There are some people that I’m like, you definitely walked away with your money’s worth,” Lineberger said. " And then there’s other people that I’m like, are you sure you don’t want to go and add some more?
“And I do ask people because I don’t want people to think it was expensive to come out here and I don’t want to be super cheap either. But I want you to have the fun experience and feel like it was worth it,” she said.
Flowers now in bloom at Arena Acres include cosmos, basil, marigolds, celosia, mums, gomphrena, amaranth and zinnia. A row of sunflowers are close to blooming, and a larger grouping of sunflowers planted near the large pumpkin patch are expected to bloom at the end of September. The assortment of pumpkins are expected to be ready to sell in late September.
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
She also offers seasonal vegetables with okra available now and spaghetti, acorn and butternut squash expected to be harvested in September.
For those who want to purchase fresh premade flower bouquets, these can be ordered with a preferred 24-hour notice for $25 and picked up at the farm on Friday nights.
A growing business
Arena Acres offers grab-n-go bouquets which can be purchased in the garden section of Massey Gordon, a boutique shop and interior design studio at 1019 Ball St. in downtown Perry. Linberger drops off fresh bouquets at the shop Friday mornings.
Lineberger also offers flower subscription services for individuals and businesses. She offered the sign up for the individual subscriptions, which is now closed for this season, for the first time on Mother’s Day. The subscriptions were a hit, she said.
Her local business subscribers for fresh-cut table flowers include Chick-fil-A, Clover Wine Merchant and the new Ghost Runner Pizza in downtown Perry. She also supplies a monthly boutique of flowers to Acres & Oak Kitchen.
Additionally, Lineberger offers a flower bar for events such as birthdays and weddings.
The flower bar is a portable shelf filled with buckets of flowers in which event guests can select and take home a few flowers or even make a boutique depending on the size of the gathering and how many flowers are ordered.
Local groups visit the farm, including Houston County Master Gardener extension volunteers and a Crawford County 4-H group. Lineberger has also visited a pre-kindergarten class to teach the children about gardening.
While Arena Acres is her business, she gets help from her husband and father. She described them as “my wonderful volunteers.” Her husband farms the vegetables. But for the most part, Lineberger works the flower farm herself— rising early in the morning, going through three pairs of clothes and taking multiple showers most days after digging in the dirt and working in the hot sun. She also handles all the marketing, bookkeeping and deliveries.
Farming is in her blood
About 250 acres remain in the family of the 700 acres of farmland her great-grandfather purchased in the 1940s when he moved his wife and six children from Indiana to Perry. He ran a dairy and horse farm.
Arena Acres rests on 20-acres Lineberger leases from her mother, who inherited about 135 acres of the original farmland.
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
Lineberger’s family has always farmed. Her grandfather grew row crops. Her parents run a 60-acre cattle farm. She calls it “hobby farming” because they all had full-time jobs and farmed on the side.
“I was born and raised in the ag industry,” said Lineberger, who noted that what is now Arena Acres had been row crops. “Farming and just agriculture have been in my life for a long time. I’ve always loved flowers, though.”
In middle school, Lineberger joined Future Farmers of America and started doing floral design and competing in floricultural competitions.
“Basically putting flower designs together, IDing different types of plants, diseases, all of that, and it just sparked my interest,” she said. “Throughout high school, I worked as a florist here in Perry.”
Working at the former Daisy Patch Flowers, Lineberger said she loved talking to people about flowers and delivering flowers that made someone’s day but she didn’t like being inside most of the time.
“So I really wanted to do flower farming, grow flowers,” she said. “But in all honesty, I never thought it would be a reality, or that it would be able to support me and my family one day.”
After graduating from Perry High School in 2013, Lineberger went on to college at the University of Georgia in Athens. As a double-major, she earned a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness and a bachelor’s degree in food industry marketing and administration.
In the summer of 2017, a college internship at Dickey Farms in Musella proved pivotal.
“Agritourism was becoming a big thing,” she said. “So that summer I realized that I potentially, if adding a few other things besides just flowers, could make this farm an agritourism location and people would want to come.”
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
Chasing the dream
But she first would go on from college to work as a food safety and human resources manager for the Chick-fil-A restaurants in Warner Robins owned and operated by Pat Braski.
In 2019, she married her high school sweetheart, Luke Lineberger. They have two boys, Samuel and Sutton.
“I just felt honestly like I was being pulled,” Samantha Lineberger said. “My heart was just wanting to stay on the farm and to really chase the dream.
“So, me and my husband had long conversations, and we decided it was the perfect time. I left Chick-fil-A and decided to chase the dream. "
Lineberger ended up taking a job at Robins Air Force Base as a safety net, but she put the dream into motion.
“In January of 2023, I got my LLC and made it an official business,” she said.
In March 2023, she and her husband came out to the farm and decided where Arena Acres would go. They started tilling up the ground and planting seeds. Her first flowers for the business bloomed that summer. She first started selling flower bouquets at farmers markets.
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
Credit: Katie Tucker/The Telegraph
In August 2023, Arena Acres opened to the public. By May, she became a full-time farmer.
“As Houston County continues to grow, all of the farmland continues to be bought out and turned into neighborhoods,” Lineberger said. “I want to be able to keep this piece of land and use it as an education piece.”
Although Lineberger noted that flower farming isn’t traditional farming, she said visitors can still experience the outdoors and being on the farm.
“That’s something I never want Arena Acres to lose, and that is the farm field,” she said.
Lineberger can be reached via Facebook or Instagram, or by email at samantha@arenaacres.com.
Credit: The Telegraph
Credit: The Telegraph
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