Reasons to Love Toronto 2014: #25. Because Queen West is Blooming

In this provenance-obsessed city, we swarm to farmers’ markets to discuss soil conditions with the people who grow our organic veggies and supply us with sustainably raised meat. It was only a matter of time before someone applied the same principles to our bouquets. That someone is Natasa Kajganic, a 29-year-old communications consultant who decided Toronto needed its own version of London’s Columbia Road flower market or ­Amsterdam’s Bloemenmarkt—especially since nearby Niagara is home to more than 100 commercial greenhouses. Last year, she launched the Toronto Flower Market, held one Saturday a month during the late spring and summer outside a factory turned event space on Sudbury Street. Local growers laid out rows of fluffy, fragrant peonies, spiky succulents and rainbow-hued gerberas, attracting thousands of people over the course of the season. This May, the market returned with several more vendors and a new, foot traffic–friendly location in an empty Queen West lot across from CAMH. The florists and growers relish the chance to chat with buyers about in-season varieties and proper plant care. And the shoppers get to feel virtuous, knowing their flowers weren’t flown in from farms thousands of miles away.