CNN Style | At $3,000 a night, luxury farm resorts are the next glamorous getaway

Reconnecting with the land

At the heart of many of these agrarian retreats are high-end meals and cooking classes using ingredients grown on site.

“The idea is to have people get more of an appreciation of where local food comes from and what goes into it,” said Kristin Soong Rapoport, a co-owner of Wildflower Farms in the bucolic Hudson Valley area of New York, in a phone call.

A former tree nursery, Wildflower’s 140-acre plot now offers bountiful crops, meadows and wooded vistas, with dozens of cabins, cottages and suites dotting the land. Beyond more traditional amenities such as a spa and pool, guests can try botanical baking, pressed-flower pottery or take cooking classes with the produce they’ve freshly picked. This summer, the farm is launching a harvest dinner series, each hosted by a notable figure in the creative or culinary industries — including Oscar de la Renta and Monse creative director Laura Kim and renown chef Flynn McGarry — and featuring ingredients harvested by guests earlier in the day.

“In general, luxury hotels were just touching on… gardening, and it was important for us to really have a farm,” Soong Rapoport said of the early research and planning into the resort. “I think the size and the ambitiousness of the program was what we thought would make it stand out.”