Backyard flower farms

Sarah Nixon, whose floral service is called, appropriately, My Luscious Backyard. Photo by Aaron Harris.

Local bouquets offer rarer, pesticide-free blooms

By Katie Hewitt
Globe and Mail
Aug. 27, 2010

Excerpts:

In Vancouver, Megan Branson of Olla Urban Flower Project maintains at least three backyard flower farms, from which she and partner Dionne Finch source dahlias, rudbeckia, giant sunflowers and even winter blooms such as Christmas roses. Constantly on the lookout for beautiful material, they also sometimes knock on doors to acquire blooms, approaching gardeners with particularly fecund inner-city plots.

“Think big flowering hydrangeas with 250 blooms,” Branson says of an especially successful haul. Olla buys its flowers from gardeners at market prices and uses them in arrangements inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower design. This summer, Branson and Finch opened a new boutique in the Gastown area of Vancouver. Branson calls the city “lotus land, with a four-season wedding climate.”

Indeed, both Olla and My Luscious Backyard have had many brides-to-be as clients, although her services, Nixon cautions, aren’t for control freaks, who must understand that her designs are at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Mike Levenston of City Farmer, a non-profit website for urban veggie growers, cites one of his Vancouver neighbours, a Greek immigrant named Mrs. Gallos, as a pioneer in this area.

For 15 years, he says, Mrs. Gallos, who spoke little English, also sold flowers she grew in her garden, leaving unattended Mason jars full of blooms on her front lawn along with signs listing prices.

“She was ‘the flower lady’ long before urban agriculture came around,” Levenston says, recalling her moniker in the neighbourhood.

Just this summer, Mrs. Gallos passed away at 89 after suffering a stroke while tending to her flowers.

“Gardening to her last day,” Levenston says.

Read the complete article here.