Why you should invest in local flowers in 2022

A wave of local flower farms is blooming across North America — and it's being led by women.

When I started growing flowers on Prince Edward Island in 2013, there were just five flower farms on the Island.

This past summer I counted 16 (and I may have missed a few). There are 162 Canadians in the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers (ASCFG), and the Canadian Flower Farming Facebook group now has 1,200 members.

Just as exciting — a growing number of florists are getting on board and starting to source their flowers from local growers. 

Until recently, if you saw a beautiful floral arrangement, chances were high that the flowers in it were imported from Colombia or Ecuador. Like the farm-to-table culinary movement, local flower farming has emerged as a way to shorten the distance between farm and vase.

Growing flowers closer to home increases the diversity of flowers that floral designers and flower lovers have access to (since many flowers do not transport well), extends vase life, and absorbs the hidden costs that are not accounted for in the price we pay for imported blooms. 

On the surface, outsourcing flower production to countries with longer hours of daylight and lower labour costs makes sense.

It guarantees steady production and a wider profit margin for the companies growing the flowers, transportation firms, and even florists. It's easy to overlook the fact that it's hard to consistently grow massive quantities of one or two varieties of flowers without using synthetic pesticides and herbicides. 

Cheap flowers also often mean painfully low wages for farm labourers.

Local flower farms operating on a smaller scale can grow a wider diversity of plants and more easily utilize alternative insect management and weed suppression techniques, which reduce the need for synthetic pesticides and herbicides. Customers who purchase local flowers can feel good knowing that the farmers who grew them did not have to sacrifice their health and well-being to do so. 

My own flower journey began when I signed up for a flower farming and design workshop with Erin Benzakein of Floret. In addition to learning about growing, harvesting, processing, selling, and arranging, I also saw how essential visual storytelling content is to effectively connecting potential customers with local flower farmers.

Six years and many lessons later my farm, Red Roots Flowers, had found a home at the Mount Continuing Care Community, where I taught floral design classes to the residents. I was selling at the Charlottetown Farmers' Market, delivering fresh flowers to subscription customers on a weekly basis, taking on small weddings, and making dry flower wreaths to extend my season. I had also launched a line of floral greeting cards. 

In 2018 my mother, who was living in California, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and needed support. When I returned to P.E.I. in the fall of 2019, I made the decision to take step back from farming and focus on my other two passions: writing and photography.  

Taking a break helped me to see that we have a strong, committed community of flower farmers on Prince Edward Island who are working so hard that they don't have a lot of time to devote to sharing their stories — stories which are beautiful and inspiring, and need to be told.