Hi Neighbour!
My name is Diana and I live at 205 Queensdale. I’ve dropped this letter in your mailbox because I’m looking for space to grow beautiful local cut flowers in the neighbourhood and your yard would be perfect!
In January of last year I started an urban flower farm in my yard (creatively named Queensdale Flowers), with a goal of making hyper-local, organically grown, zero-waste bouquets for neighbours. I wanted to try flower farming out for a year to see if I would enjoy the process of running a cut flower business on a super small scale. It was great! It was amazing to see how much I could grow in such a small space, and it was delightful to be able to share that beauty and excitement with my neighbours. I’ve now committed to making this a viable business and have stocked up on seeds, bulbs, corms and bare roots for this coming season, with an eye to expanding the selection of blooms for this year.
This is where you come in. I’ve outgrown my space! I’ve packed every inch of my front and back yards and still have plants I’m looking to grow. Your street facing yard is a perfect spot for this, as it gets a lot of sun.
So how does this work? It’s a trade: you lend me a portion of your yard and ideally access to water during dry spells, and in return you get less yard maintenance and beautiful blooms to admire throughout the growing season. You also would be helping the beneficial pollinators that visit these plants and improving the soil health of your yard, all without having to lift a finger. On top of that, you would be helping a small local business succeed and facilitating the development of a community-driven initiative.
This is not a new idea, but it might be new-ish to the East End. In the West End of Toronto, Euclid Farms uses a similar model that was built up by a lovely woman named Sarah who ran My Luscious Backyard. While Euclid Farms supply other local florists along with providing flowers for events and their own shop, for this upcoming season, I’m only looking to supply our neighbourhood and to connect with either the hospital or a seniors’ centre for any extra flowers I grow.
I can definitely get to rambling on why local flowers are important, but I’ve finally set up my website and posted a great video there if you are interested in taking a look. The site is queensdaleflowers.ca
I hope this sounds interesting to you! If so, please contact me in your preferred method: email me at diana@queensdalefarm.ca or call or text me at 416.876.8321. I can give you a tour of what I’ve got going on now, and some of the plants that I’ll be growing this year or we can just jump right into planning. :) And if this is something you aren’t keen on, no problem! Maybe you can think of another neighbour who might be? I still hope you’ll get in touch just to say hi.
Thanks and hope to talk to you soon!
Diana Fleming
416.876.8321
diana@queensdalefarm.ca