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.
