Meet Jordan Melville of Melville’s Munchers

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Melville.

Hi Jordan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve always found Venus Flytraps interesting since my first visit to the Atlanta botanical gardens as a young child, but during my first year as a Montessori teacher in 2019, in South Carolina, I decided to get some Venus Flytrap and American Pitcher Plant rhizomes from a big box store. Unfortunately school went online before we could build our bog garden so I ended up taking home the “class pets”. As “remote” time went on, I got more into carnivorous plants. Eventually we went back into the classroom and we were finally able to build our class bog garden. I continued growing my own carnivorous plants at home. After 3 years I moved back to Atlanta in 2022 and continued teaching while growing my carnivorous plant collection. By 2023 my collection had grown so much that I decided to try out selling some at pop ups and help educate the public about these wonderful and easy to grow plants. I started with the Georgia Plant Trade and Sales Facebook pop up group and work with them pretty regularly as well as other stores and pop ups on occasion. Last year I cross-pollinated my first American Pitcher Plant hybrids to create my fist cultivars so those have sprouted along with my next generation of open mixed pitcher plants.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been fairly smooth. The plants have pretty passive care. The biggest struggle was the long deep freeze we had here a few winters back. I was in Savannah for the holiday and wasn’t able to bring my plants inside and lost a good amount of them since the freeze was so cold and long. Other than that the hardest part is having space for hundreds of plants.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Melville’s Munchers is a hobby grown carnivorous plant vendor specializing in native carnivorous plants. I try to fight the unfounded stigma of these plants being hard to grow not only through educating the public but also by providing bigger, healthier,hardier, and cheaper (typically $10-$20) plants than the big box store options that tend to trend towards failure. I’m proud to provide this education and accessibility to these plants that are threatened by encroaching development, poaching and environmental protection deregulation. As this is a hobby and I’m a full time welder these days, I don’t run an online store yet, just doing pop ups. I do have an Instagram, @melvilles_munchers, where I post events, pictures of my carnivorous plants, give advice and share knowledge. I’d love to get into building and curating full bogs for customers.
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What’s next?
I’m excited to be making more of my own cultivars to have a wider range of high-end plants to sell for collectors along side my open mixes. Currently working on having some butterworts available this season for people’s kitchens to get the fruitflies and fungus gnats. Next year I’m planning on having already curated collection bog gardens available.

Pricing:

• Typical Venus Flytraps $10
• Venus Flytrap cultivars $15
• American Pitcher Plant (open mix) small $10 – medium $20
• American Pitcher Plant cultivars $30
• Sundews $10-$30

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melvilles_munchers?igsh=cjNvZGc5aGp5M2dn