It’s hard to resist the call of fresh flowers. Walk past any floral shop or green grocer at this time of year and you’ll encounter a colourful display of fresh blooms, often flown in from faraway places. There are alternatives. Buying local, more sustainably grown flowers has never been easier thanks to a growing number of flower farms, markets and some unconventional urban flower farmers in Toronto who plant flowers in backyards and sell the fresh cut stems at markets such as The Toronto Flower Market.
“Flowers that have been picked that morning are so vibrant and fresh, they have a whole different energy than flowers that are imported,” says Sarah Nixon, a floral designer and urban flower farmer who owns My Luscious Backyard and has been growing flowers in neighbourhood yards for the past seventeen years.
In the beginning, Nixon was cutting fresh flowers from her own yard, putting them in mason jars and selling them at a local farmer’s market. It was a hit. From there she says demand for her flowers took off and she realized that if she wanted to keep growing flowers she would have to find additional space to grow her blooms besides her own backyard.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Star
