Carol Nelson finds her happy place in a 70-by-30-foot bed of flowers. She loves their smell and giving bouquets peppered with herbs to people she loves.
Nelson has been growing and selling flowers for four years at her home in Pine Island, but this year her business, The Little Flower, has "exploded" as more and more people look to buy flowers in their own (metaphorical) backyard.
"It's a more personal touch," Nelson said. "It's not a mass production kind of thing. Every flower is looked at almost every day and they're handled with a lot of care."
Domestic flower farms are on the rise in Southeast Minnesota and the United States. In 2017, there were 22 total floriculture farms across Olmsted, Goodhue and Wabasha counties. As of 2022, there are 36, including 10 in Olmsted County, seven in Goodhue County, and 19 in Wabasha County.
Across the country, growers reported more than 158 million square feet of protected-culture flower and green production in 2022. That's the equivalent of more than 2,700 football fields, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But why has there been an increase in the number of flower farms in recent years?
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