The proof is in her genes. Chicago florist Janessa Knodt comes from a bloom-obsessed family-most notably, her grandparents, August and Doris Knodt, who opened a flower shop out of their apartment in 1952 in Hayward, Calif. They called it Forget Me Knodt. (Clever, huh?) Eventually, they upgraded to a brick-and-mortar location that would house many of her favorite childhood memories.
Today, the 34-year-old owns a flower shop by the same name in Uptown. Just like her grandparents, Knodt's designs are served with a side of whimsy.
"We're definitely more quirky-not fussy," Knodt said. "I love loose, organic, free-flowing flowers. I have a hard time when someone wants something purposeful and perfect. The weirder, the better."
Although Knodt's heritage is deeply rooted in the floral industry, the West Coast native studied English and creative writing at the University of California, San Diego. The day after she graduated, Knodt packed her car and moved to Chicago-a promise she'd made herself after visiting the city at age 16.
"California is a much slower pace, and at that time-in my mid 20s-I wanted to be in a big city. Chicago seemed perfect," she said. "The people are super friendly, and it's not as overwhelming as New York."
Knodt put in long hours as a copywriter at 88 Brand Partners, a creative agency just south of the Loop. But even her hectic schedule couldn't keep her away from flowers for long. When her brother started planning his wedding, Knodt volunteered to take care of the flowers. That wedding led to another, which led to nine more that year.
"I was in my kitchen making stuff all the time," Knodt laughed, adding that her bathtub was regularly filled to the brim with flowers. "But as more and more people came to me, I realized I could make a living doing this. I was doing way too many weddings to be operating out of a kitchen."
The following year, Knodt booked 26 weddings. In a leap of faith, she quit her job at the agency in 2012 to pursue floral design as a full-time career.
"There were definitely some Friday nights when all of my friends would be out at parties and I would be up all night drinking 5-Hour Energy making boutonnieres, thinking, 'Why am I doing this to myself? I could be sitting at my desk writing ad copy,'" she said. "But I think any small-business owner will tell you that. You definitely have times when you hate your business, but it's also so gratifying."
While weddings kept her dreams afloat, Knodt craved the human interaction she remembered from her grandparents' neighborhood shop.
"I'm very outgoing. I love having people over, so I wanted to have a space," Knodt said. "The neighborhood flower shop is a thing that you don't see much of anymore. People go to Jewel when they want flowers."
A sign came in 2013 while Knodt was walking her dog, Maddie, in Uptown. A storefront on Wilson Avenue had gone up for rent just west of Baker & Nosh, one of her favorite breakfast spots. She signed the lease in March and opened shop in April.
Moving from her kitchen came with growing pains, including an incident involving a fancy new flower cooler and her very first wedding in the Uptown space.
"I was so excited to have that cooler, but I didn't know you had to calibrate the temperature and adjust it. There were all these things I was supposed to do, but I just plugged it in and stuck all the flowers inside," Knodt said. "I went home that night and when I came back in the morning they were all dead. The temperature was turned below freezing. I had to order all new flowers for that wedding-that was expensive."
Local florists and small business owners-like Kelly Marie Thompson of Logan Square's Fleur and Baker & Nosh owners Bill Millholland Millholl and Terry Groff-were happy to help along the way, offering guidance on everything from floral techniques to employee management.
Knodt's husband, John Paul Ambrosio, said he believes her stint in advertising also paid off in a big way.
"She understands how to reach out and really strike a chord with her customers," he said. "She's genuine-it's not just put-on. She's very much in tune with her brand, and her brand is her. It might be easier or less expensive to go somewhere else for flowers, but her customers appreciate her authenticity."
Putting in face time with her clients is one of the most satisfying parts of Knodt's job.
"It's getting to actually make something and then seeing the immediate reaction of the person right in front of you. That's really gratifying," she said. "I'm in the business of making people happy."
Throughout the store, there are nods to Knodt's grandparents, their dreams and the original Forget Me Knodt. Framed photos punctuate the walls: one of her grandmother handing her mother her wedding bouquet, another of the original shop sign that hung in her grandparents' apartment in Hayward. There's also a loving portrait of her grandfather sketched by her grandmother.
And although August Knodt is deceased and her grandparents weren't able to teach her the ins and outs of running a business-something Knodt admitted she still struggles with-she did pick up invaluable lessons that shape her practice today. Rule No. 1: No order is ever too weird.
"My grandma was up for anything. She always told this one story about this guy's girlfriend who loved pigs, so he wanted a pig made out of flowers. And my grandma was like, 'Yeah, we can do that,'" Knodt said, laughing. "She found a way to do it-she gave it a little nose and pipe cleaner tail."
Knodt channeled her 91-year-old grandma Doris when two grooms came to her last year with an out-of-the-box idea: They were getting married at the Old Town School of Folk Music and wanted to incorporate instruments in the floral design. For months leading up to the wedding, Knodt collected broken pieces from customers and community members-a busted drum set, tubas, trombones, cellos and violins flooded the shop.
Days before the wedding, Knodt breathed new life into the instruments with bursts of yellow and blue flowers-sunflowers, roses and irises poured from the forgotten pieces.
"It was really special because these two guys have waited so long, and they can finally get married legally. I was even more excited to go nuts," she said. "It hadn't really been done before, but I was just like, 'We'll figure it out.'"
In the past two years, Knodt has attached flowers to taxidermy, anchored herself to the bottom of a pool to create floating centerpieces and woven floral halos for statues at a venue. But if there's one stereotype she's is trying to break, it's that the floral industry is all roses all the time.
"People tend to think, 'Oh, your job is so pretty and you must not have any stress ever,'" she said. "It's super stressful. These flowers are dying as we're looking at them-it's all perishable. This is a dirty job."
Though she may be silently freaking out on the inside, Knodt is looking constantly for ways to spread beauty through her product.
"She's operating on 30 percent but giving 100 [percent] to everyone," her husband said. "Even when she's sleep-deprived, she's got a smile on her face and she's wondering how she can make someone else happier."
To give her customers a peek into the labor of love that is her job, Knodt hosts weekly floral classes at her shop. With a 10-person-max, BYOB policy and a new theme every week, she passes on the basics of floral design-just like her grandparents did decades ago.
"I'm such a people person and I'm so into creating," Knodt said. "It was kind of like that in advertising. I'd write something and then I'd get to see it up on a billboard, but it wasn't always for a good purpose-like a credit card company. This is a much more immediate, tangible way to create and see something come to fruition."
TAKE A CLASS:
Forget Me Knodt, After Dark
7-9 p.m. Feb. 11
1313 W. Wilson Ave. 773-944-1041.
$100 per student
Create an all-red centerpiece just in time for Valentine's Day. Bonus points: Chocolate truffles from Baker & Nosh and a signature cocktail will be served.
Visit forgetmeknodt.com/blog for more classes.