A Cottage Grove flower shop has given life to the community for the past 41 years.
America’s Best Flowers “started out with, I believe, one or two greenhouses,” said owner Carol Knapton. “So we gradually expanded to five and six.”
Knapton said her husband Ed Knapton, started the flower shop because “he wanted to bring joy to people. He came from a farming background. He loved horticulture. So he got a degree in horticulture at the university, and then he wanted to run his own business. It’s a lot of work. We started with a pick-your-own-fruit-and-vegetable business that evolved into growing flowers and a gardening business.”
Their business, which has blossomed and grown over the years, is coming to an end on Christmas Eve.
Carol Knapton said Ed Knapton had stage 4 prostate cancer and was living his final days at Agrace Hospital. He was there for three days before he died Nov. 6.
“Once they managed his pain, I told him it’s OK. Go ahead. I’m going to be OK. Then, he passed,” Knapton said.
America’s Best Flowers to close Christmas Eve
Knapton said taking on the workload of the business was too much for her to handle. Last week, she made the decision to close on Christmas Eve.
“He had certain areas that he was good at, I had certain areas that I was good at. Once that disappeared, I just wasn’t able to do it myself,” she said.
Right now, most things in the store are 50% off. She needs to sell everything in less than two weeks.
After more than four decades of running the shop with her husband, Knapton said she will miss the people she’s worked with and the friends she’s made along the way, but mostly she’ll miss the memories she made with her husband.
“I miss everything,” she said. “He was my soulmate. I’ll probably miss him the rest of my life.”
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