Slow Flowers Movement has flower farms blooming all over Minnesota

Molly Gaeckle started her flower farm sowing just a few rows in the backyard garden of a small rental house in Minneapolis. Eight years later, her cut flower operation, Northerly Flora, has grown to two city lots in Minneapolis and over an acre in Hudson, Wis.

Gaeckle’s passion for flower farming is rooted in learning that the majority (80%, according to the University of Minnesota Department of Horticultural Science) of cut flowers sold in the United States are imported.

Plus, “I love to see a freshly planted field and I enjoy the cadence of the changing seasons,” Gaeckle said of the more than 150 varieties of blooms, fillers and foliage that she grows.

Undaunted by a short growing season, Gaeckle and a rising number of cut flower farmers are embracing the Slow Flowers Movement to reduce the carbon footprint of floral bouquets that make their way onto tablescapes. Think “flower miles,” just like “food miles” in the farm-to-fork movement.

Debra Prinzing, founder of the Slow Flowers Movement, said the number of flower farms is on the rise nationwide. A 2023 U.S. Department of Agriculture Floriculture Survey found that the number of producers totaled 10,216 compared with 8,049 in 2022. In Minnesota, the number of producers increased by 17% from 2022 to 2023.

According to the University of Minnesota Department of Horticultural Science, more than 100 flower farms exist in Minnesota. Robin Trott, who teaches flower farming webinars for the university, has seen the number of flower farms rise seven- to eight-fold in the past decade. She also noted that the majority are women-owned.

“Our focus on local, seasonal and sustainable flowers has resonated with the floral industry, establishing customer demand and witnessing hundreds (if not thousands) of emerging cut-flower growers entering the marketplace,” Prinzing said.

Northerly Flora’s Gaeckle began her operation with community-supported agriculture subscriptions, mostly for family and friends. Today, CSA is still the backbone of the operation, though she also sells directly to local florists. As a local grower, she can provide florists with specialized, delicate flowers.

“I like to grow annual foxgloves that can’t survive the long trip involved with conventional production, where flowers travel thousands of miles in planes and trucks,” she said.

Gaeckle and her seven-person crew also create arrangements for weddings and events with a wild, organic aesthetic and unique textural elements and color palettes. In addition to delivering fresh-cut arrangements, she opens the doors of her Longfellow neighborhood flower studio on select days each week so customers can grab pre-made bouquets or curated DIY buckets. Gaeckle also occasionally hosts on-site workshops on floral arranging.

For Gaeckle, the art of cut flower farming in Minnesota is something she continues to perfect. To extend the growing season, Gaeckle grows some of her flowers in cloth-covered high tunnels that protect them from elements such as temperature swings, wind and rain. The cloth also helps block UV rays, resulting in a longer stem that is perfect for arrangements.

Then, to get a jump start on spring, she uses another high tunnel where she uses frost cloth and overwinters cool-season annuals like nigella, snapdragons and campanula.

“We’re cutting annuals in May so it extends our season exponentially,” Gaeckle said.

At Lakeside Farm and Flowers, Kacy Honl transformed a fallow field next to Hydes Lake in Cologne into a U-pick flower farm for those wanting to try making bouquets at home.

Open from mid-July until first frost, she started the business because she wanted to give her children, Riley, 11, and Taylor, 9, the chance to get “dirt under their fingernails” and some of the same farm know-how that she and her husband, Cody, a physician, had growing up.

During the growing season, Honl sells her blooms by the bucket — small, medium and large, ranging from $20 to $40. She offers several varieties, with top sellers being dahlias, sunflowers and celosia. She gives customers a quick tutorial on the best way to cut and pick, then sends them on their way among the colorful rows. A play area accommodates children if their attention span wears out before the picking is over.

“I’m selling an experience,” she said.

For Erin Honken of Erin’s Acre, located between Faribault and Lonsdale, Minn., it all began when she started dating and then married a farmer and moved to the country. After becoming empty-nesters, she and Dan, who farms full-time growing soybeans and corn plus raising beef cattle, spent a lot of time gardening together.

Erin planted a patch of zinnias and a few dahlias alongside their big vegetable garden. “Growing those few cut flowers for our kitchen table was really satisfying,” she said.

She began to read everything she could find on flower farming, looking to gardening books, Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration. She participated in a flower farming workshop in Iowa where, coincidentally, Debra Prinzing of the Slow Flowers Movement was a presenter. Erin came home empowered and motivated to be a “legit flower farmer.”

Currently, her trade consists of CSA, U-pick, DIY buckets, some sales to local businesses and front-porch deliveries — all while she balances her full-time job as a human resources director at a private school. She sees U-pick as the area with the most growth potential.

In 2021, Rice County designated Erin and Dan as Outstanding Conservationists of the Year for their sustainable practices. Along with a built-in bovine source of fertilizer, she also uses barrier fabric to control weeds and maintains her greenhouse with passive solar energy by using water-filled, black-painted 55-gallon drums that warm up in the daytime and then release stored heat at night.

The reward is that customers who visit have plenty of varieties to choose from, including 250 of those much-sought-after dahlias.

“It’s really fun seeing people roaming the farm and gardens, picking flowers and enjoying being outside,” she said. “I’d like to say they’re unplugged, but I see lots of phones out, snapping pictures and capturing the memory.”

Rhonda Hayes is a Twin Cities-based Extension Master Gardener, writer and author of “Pollinator Friendly Gardening.”