Kim Zimmerman has been gardening for as long as she can remember—first, as a child with her grandmother and, now, as the founder of Rowdy Poppy. Established in 2018, the urban micro-farm and floral design house recently opened its first retail space (3463 Walnut Street, Suite 4) in Denver’s River North Art District.
Guests pop in for chilled bottles of wine, pretty paper cards and ready-made bouquets. Some stay a while for an afternoon “flower hour” session or another event, like seasonal vase arranging or crafting dahlia crowns. Rowdy Poppy also hosts educational workshops that cover what to do—and what not to do—if you want to be a successful grower in Colorado.
When she first moved from Atlanta to Rollinsville, Zimmerman recalls making many gardening mistakes.
“All the native plants that I was seeing were so different from what you find in the Southeast,” she says.
Choosing what to grow and where proved challenging in an unfamiliar climate, where high altitude and hungry deer added to the difficulty. After many failed attempts, she decided to ditch the trial-and-error method, connect with gardeners at the local nursery and do some research.
“That’s when I found out about the Colorado [State University] Extension programs and Master Gardener programming,” she says. In addition to completing that training, Zimmerman attended classes on flower farming and design, and volunteered at the Denver Botanic Gardens after relocating to the city.
She moved to Denver around 2008, during her last year of graduate school. Zimmerman holds a master’s degree in contemplative psychotherapy and had a private practice for several years. While that might seem like a big career change, Zimmerman doesn’t see her two roles as separate but, rather, as part of the same path.
“[My background in psychotherapy] informs everything I do, because it’s all about relationships with people and community, and finding joy,” she says. “There’s a lot of overlap and I think it set me up to be an entrepreneur with heart.”
In addition to client relationships, Rowdy Poppy places a heavy emphasis on sustainability, which makes it stand out among floral design shops.
“There’s a tremendous amount of waste [in the industry] and a lot of single-use plastics—sticks that hold cards, green floral foam, extra packaging,” says Zimmerman, adding that she could go on.
Rowdy Poppy swaps traditional floral foam with reusable netted wire and discs with upward-facing pins, which hold arranged flowers in place. Its packaging is minimal and recyclable, and all flowers have a purpose.
“If a bloom is spent, we’ll find a way to use it,” she says. “Maybe we dry the whole bloom to use in dried arrangements. Maybe we save the petals to use in flower confetti. Maybe we press them for artwork.”
Even seeds and dahlia tubers are saved and sold in-shop.
“We don’t want to waste anything,” she says.
After all, Rowdy Poppy works hard to cultivate its delicate plants. Everything is grown organically. The company uses fish fertilizer rather than synthetics, and chooses a mechanical pest management process over chemical pesticides.
“We are literally picking bugs off of our flowers,” says Zimmerman. “It’s a lot more labor, but we know that our flowers are safe for people to use.”
Rowdy Poppy is also highly conscious of its greenhouse gas emissions. One of its micro-farms, which spans just 1/10th of an acre, is right outside of Zimmerman’s Denver home. The other quarter-acre growing space is at The Infinite Monkey Theorem, an urban winery in RiNo.
“It’s just a few blocks away from our new shop,” says Zimmerman. “My farm manager harvests flowers in the morning, walks down the street and brings the flowers here to process. Our carbon footprint is so small, negligible, [in comparison to] them being flown in from Central or South America.”
Whatever blooms Rowdy Poppy doesn’t grow in-house, it generally sources from other farmers that are part of the Colorado Flower Collective. When the local growing season ends, it supports other U.S. states whenever possible.
The shop will tap those partners later in the year, as Zimmerman is already planning for the holidays. Look forward to wreath workshops and other seasonal festivities, and be sure to keep Rowdy Poppy in mind for private parties, special occasion packages and giftable flower subscriptions, too.
