by Jessica Charpentier
APG of East Central Minnesota/Crow River News
A year ago, St. Michael-Albertville alumni and Otsego resident Maggie Barthel officially launched Lily Bee Collective, which is named after her daughter Lily Barthel. Her husband, Joe Barthel, has farming in his heritage, so after they built their home on generational land, they began planting vegetables and gardening.
Barthel is a registered nurse and her interest in flowers and bouquets began during the pandemic when many people took up new hobbies.
“It was really kind of like a retreat for me after a busy 12-hour shift. Going out to our garden, picking flowers for myself to enjoy. I’d share them with friends and family,” Barthel said.
One day, she picked some zinnias from her garden and brought in flowers for her co-workers during a difficult week at work. She was surprised by the amount of gratitude her co-workers expressed and has since come to know that flowers can be appreciated for much more than just beauty.
“Often I’m met with some sort of story about how ‘your flowers remind me of flowers that my grandma used to grow’ or ‘my mom always had peonies and the smell of those, they just bring me right back to those peonies on my mom’s kitchen table’ or ‘that’s my daughter's birth flower.’ They bring floods of emotion,” Barthel said.
After 2020, she started growing more and more types of flowers and would sell them at the end of her driveway. She now has a flower shed on the property where Lily Bee Collective sells flowers and also pumpkins and vegetables when they’re in season.
In the future, she would like to expand Lily Bee Collective and take up beekeeping and sell beeswax, candles, honey and other items.
The Barthels grow flowers such as tulips and ranunculus in the spring. They have around 160 peony plants, which will bloom in June, and then the rest of the flowers will begin to bloom in July.
Lily Bee Collective grows and sells a lot of flowers that are unique, rare and sometimes difficult to grow.
“So we’ll still have your traditional like zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons, sunflowers, celosia. Things that are pretty easy to grow, but we’ll also have lisianthus, statice, yarrow, feverfew, China asters,” Barthel said.
Another big flower Lily Bee Collective grows is dahlias, which is Barthel’s favorite flower and usually blooms in late summer. She wants to sell dahlia tubers for people who want to grow their own.
Everything at Lily Bee Collective is organic and they don’t use insecticides, herbicides, or pesticides.
In the late summer, Barthel hopes to launch a new event called Wandering the Blooms.
“I want them to have that feeling like I did when I’d come home from a really busy shift to come pick, kind of escape their busy lives for a little bit. Use this as a retreat to literally stop and smell the flowers,” Barthel said.
Customers will be able to have free range over picking flowers and making their own bouquets. Wandering the Blooms will also be a fun activity for groups who’d like to host private group events for bachelorette parties, co-worker gatherings and other get-togethers.
Barthel also wants to eventually host events that will give bridal parties the option to arrange bouquets. The flowers will already be pre-cut with the bridal party’s color scheme and other factors in mind, but the bridal party will be able to have fun and arrange the flowers themselves.
Lily Bee Collective can be found on Facebook and Instagram, and will soon be launching a website, lilybeecollective.com.
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