Marigolds, cosmos, black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, zinnias, amaranth and dill.

The flower beds at Gather Mountain Blooms before the Rocky Mountain Flower Festival are packed with blooms the colors of Crayolas.

Post-festival the beds are decimated, stripped of their vibrant frocks, left to mend and heal.

But don’t cry for them, Coloradans, for these are what the urban farm’s co-owner Nikki McComsey calls “cut and come again flowers.”

“The way we grow our flowers, they’re intended to be cut through every week,” she said. “They will fully rebloom on the plant by the next week.”

The fourth annual festival is Saturday at the urban farm 10 minutes from downtown Colorado Springs.

“The flower festival is a music festival filled with flowers,” McComsey said.

This year’s lineup, stitched together by Rocky Mountain Highway, leans heavily on bluegrass, Americana and folk, and features Jason Miller and Rob Fulton from the band Woodshed Red, Ruby Greenberg and Friends and the perennial favorite, Grass it Up.

The day also features line dancing in the barn, food trucks, a beer garden, floral-inspired cocktails, llamas to hang out with, a kids zone, artisan market and flowers, lots of flowers, all available to be plucked during the festival.

Attendees can purchase either a regular general admission ticket or a general admission plus You-Pick Flowers ticket, which means taking a cup and some scissors and wandering through the friendly-faced flowers and filling a cup with blooms to take home. The number of You-Pick Flowers tickets are limited to ensure there’s enough to go around. McComsey recommends pre-buying tickets to get first priority in the fields.

And luckily, it was a great year for the plants, with good weather and manageable pests, including those destructive grasshoppers, who love to eat the greenery like it’s the last thing on their bug bucket list.

“No hail, no major windstorm, lots of good rain every week,” McComsey said.

“The biggest thing is the grasshoppers. That’s a constant struggle. But we’ve figured out what flowers they won’t bother as much. The ones we know they love are sunflowers, so we have to time them right before the grasshoppers get to them. The ones we have blooming now we know work best with the grasshopper pressure.”

Colorado Springs mini-con to feature TikTok star

McComsey and her two sisters opened the cut-flower farm four years ago in the fields at historic Venetucci Farm, and have managed to turn it into a year-round operation, with events throughout the spring, summer, fall and even winter, with their Christmas on the Farm and Holiday Wreath Workshop in December. They plant about 60,000 flowers on an acre and a half from April to mid to late July, and sell them at their Flower Stand and You-Pick Flowers days throughout the summer. Some of the blooms also are sold to florists around Colorado.

“There’s nothing like it in Colorado Springs,” McComsey said. “For people who either love flowers or the feeling of being on a farm and around agriculture, it’s a unique thing you can do on a summer evening or morning. A lot of women come out, but guys are now starting to enjoy our music. They like to bring their ladies out for date night.”