Beyond the blooms

ST. JOSEPH — Nowadays, when winter gives way and spring temperatures start to climb, Amy Notsch focuses on a new kind of care, one very different from her years spent as an obstetric nurse. From its small-town roots, Amy’s Holistic Flower Farm, established in 2024, has blossomed in just a short couple of years.

“I really believe I was led here … that is why I am doing this,” Notsch said. “I don’t really know what more is in my wheelhouse, but we’ll find out.”

Notsch’s support team starts at home with her husband, Ed, and their three daughters.

She said she is grateful for her family’s encouragement since she started the flower farm business full time. Britney, Notsch’s 22-year-old daughter, helps maintain the business website, while her youngest daughter, Nicole, helps with market setups and deliveries. Lily, Notsch’s middle daughter, is more interested in helping her dad with his bee hives, which Notsch said is just fine because pollination is equally important on the farm.

For 22 years, Notsch’s career was spent schooling and working her way up to becoming a registered nurse. She had fulfilled her dream and was working in the Family Birthing Center at the St. Cloud Hospital, where she became accustomed to providing family-centered care. However, 12-hour nursing shifts eventually became a challenge for her because of ongoing back issues,
Notsch said. She began working from home in the healthcare industry. She said the transition was hard. Going from working with an entire team at the hospital to being on her own was not ideal. She stuck it out for a year and a half.

“For the first time since I was 16 years old, I was without a job,” Notsch said. “It was an interesting time in my life, but I needed that time to heal.”

The time had come for her to focus on her own health. Moving forward with a holistic approach of healing the mind, body and spirit as one was where she found peace, she said.

When she was ready to get back to work, she took a shot and applied for a floral designer position and landed the job. She found herself enjoying her new role designing floral arrangements; she also felt very constrained, she said. Her ideas and inspirations soon created a spark that led her to enroll in farm business management classes at Central Lakes College.

“I had gardened with my mom and my grandma, and I also had some direct sales experience,” Notsch said. “But the whole farming aspect was a new role for me … the concept was the same, just a different crop and a little different way of using the crop.”

Notsch said that while she was working part time designing arrangements, she began putting together her own business plan. She hopes to enroll in horticulture therapy classes in the future.

In 2024, Notsch decided to give up her floral designer day job and go all in with her new business idea. She established Holistic Flower Farm, creating custom arrangements and growing her own flowers on her property.

Since then, Notsch has been attending local farmers markets regularly and has become known as the flower lady at the St. Cloud VA farmers market downtown, she said.

When Notsch isn’t tending to flowers or setting up at markets, she spends her time with a group from the University of Minnesota Extension Master Gardener program in Benton County.

“It’s a fun group,” Notsch said. “We love sharing our knowledge with each other and with the community as well.”

Aside from the Benton County Fair, when the master gardener members come together to set up and work their booth, they meet once a month. Garden tours are a favorite learning experience, Notsch said. Members enjoy visiting and sharing about all that they have going on in the garden.

A recent highlight was an herb garden workshop held at Northern Hollow Winery in Foley. The workshop was well received and Notsch is now working with the winery on plans for a winter porch pot workshop.

Notsch also enjoys spending time with her Sunshine Stampers Stampin’ Up team, where she works on greeting cards. She said she has always enjoyed the hobby and has now found the ideal way to connect her hand-crafted greeting cards with her flower farm business.

Through a friend’s shop in downtown St. Cloud, Notsch can sell her bouquets, plants and cards. She met the owners, Monique and David of Danique Beauty and the Beans, as farmers market vendors, and she said she is thankful for the connection and opportunities in which their businesses have been able to bloom together.

“It’s a great group of people (vendors),” Notsch said. “We all support each other. Monique and David are there to help me out.”

Notsch’s nursing background is something she is still passionate about. She also works part time at Soulists, a holistic health and wellness clinic in Cold Spring. As the clinic’s registered nurse, Notsch can utilize her nursing skills, helping patients on their own healing journey. Having walked a similar road, Notsch said it is important to her that people advocate for their own health and carve out time for healing.

Notch said with a lot of hard work and many baby steps along the way, things are coming together. Now a member of the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce, Notsch said the doors keep opening and the resources keep falling into place.

“My chamber experience so far has been outstanding,” Notsch said. “It’s been so helpful in networking. Farmers markets were always my way of marketing, and you learn along the way what works and what doesn’t.”

That initial leap of faith, and Notsch’s choices since, have helped to shape her life in ways that she said she could have never put together on her own.

Petal it forward is one way she likes to give thanks. Notsch gives away two roses at different locations in mid-October as part of the National Petal It Forward initiative through the Society of American Florists, of which she is a member. Recipients are encouraged to keep one rose and share the second as an act of kindness.

“The feedback has just been amazing,” Notsch said. “This is what I believe in … helping people and making their day. This is what I need right now and it’s why I do this.”