Canada: A Boom for Blossoms
Not considered an essential service, local flower farmers feared no one would buy bouquets during a pandemic
By Linda Barnard
Edible Vancouver
June 19, 2020
Excerpt:
Rose Dykstra of The Front Yard Flower Company also delivers to some of her Vancouver subscribers.
Dykstra says this could be the best year yet for her Front Yard Flower Company business. She started her business on three front yards in her South Vancouver Sunset neighbourhood, including her own home. She now leases a vegetable farm plot in Richmond, about a 10-minute drive from her house. It adds up to about an acre where she grows about 400 varieties of flowers.
Subscribers can get seasonal, weekly-to-monthly mixed bouquet options, ranging in price from $77 for a once-a-month bouquet for July, August and September, up to $296 for a full season of blooms. There’s also a CSA devoted to those summer showstoppers, dahlias.
“I haven’t looked at my numbers since this time of year is kind of crazy,” she says. “I’m just heading into my third year, so I am still in the start-up phase of getting all the farm infrastructure into place. Things have been steadily getting better each year, but I think COVID has accelerated that this year.”
