Photos: Melissa Jopp Photography
Flower farm offers a new twist on the tried-and-true V-Day bouquet.
Coming up with fresh ideas for Valentine’s Day gifts can become, dare we say, frustrating. Perhaps, it’s time to turn a new leaf and freshen up the 14th’s gift repertoire.
Consider: For 2020’s Valentine’s Day, according to balancingeverything.com, Americans spent $2.3 billion on flowers and plants. Don’t get us wrong. Flowers are a wonderful gift—anytime of the year. And we don’t need to reinvent the wheel here, but we can certainly put a new spin on it. Flowers and Fuzzy Butts has some ideas.
The New Germany-based 1/4-acre flower farm is owned and operated by Melissa Jopp, who gets a fair share of help from her husband, Grady, and children Kylie, 12, and Jayce, 10. The farm is home to mostly field-grown annual and perennial flowers, including amaranth, celosia, daffodils, dahlias, lisianthus, native flowers, peonies, snapdragons, strawflowers, sunflowers, tulips, zinnias and much more.
If a bouquet is a great gift idea, wouldn’t several bouquets be an even better one? Jopp thinks so. Flower subscriptions are a personal favorite of hers, and she offers two types. One option includes receiving a wrapped bouquet once a week for six weeks, or sign up for three biweekly bouquets for the same duration. Subscriptions are offered in spring, summer and fall. The mixed bouquets are teeming with flowers from the season. “My customers look forward to seeing what each bouquet offers,” Jopp says, explaining customers are surprised to discover the color and variety of flowers in the delivery.
Other gift ideas include mini dried flower arrangements and pressed flower frames, both available through Jopp. “I think most of us would agree that fresh cut flowers can’t be beat, but during the seasons that are just too cold to grow flowers in Minnesota, dried flowers are a fun and an everlasting option,” she says. “They really have a beautiful, unique look to them, and you don’t have to worry about keeping them watered.”
Inspired Growing
As a sustainable grower, Jopp eschews chemicals and even organic pesticides. “I am very passionate about helping out our quickly-fading population of pollinators, which in turn helps out the whole ecosystem,” she says. Her passion extended to naming her business, Flowers and Fuzzy Butts. Flowers speaks for itself. “Fuzzy Butts are what I call bumblebees,” Jopp says. “I just adore bumblebees and want to help these guys out while growing all these flowers. It’s important to me that I am not only growing flowers to create bouquets for people, but also helping out our amazing hard-working pollinators.”
Jopp’s passion for her business was also spurred by a surprising statistic. “When I heard that the majority of flowers in the United States were imported and I mean a large percent—more than 80 percent, I wanted to help provide local flowers to the community around me. I find supporting local businesses to be so important—and the bonus is that the flowers will last longer because they’re fresh cut versus three to four days of transportation from wherever they are coming from.”
Flowers and Fuzzy Butts
Facebook: Flowers and Fuzzy Butts
Instagram: @flowersandfuzzybutts
