How I became a Flower Farmer

In 2017, we started planning our wedding. We chose September as the month to have our wedding for a couple of reasons - one, it’s cooler and we have been to a few outdoor weddings in July and knew we didn’t want to stand in that kind of heat. Second- I love dahlias and they are a fall flower so we needed a fall date. After years of working as a florist I knew that the only way to get lots of high quality dahlias was to grow them myself. Typically, for an Edmonton florist the primary way to get dahlias is to order them from a farm or wholesaler in British Columbia. The flowers are shipped to us here in Edmonton by refrigerated truck, dry packed (meaning they are out of water). There are two things dahlia hate - being out of water and being cold, so when they arrive they are not happy and drop a lot of petals. 

So the adventure began. I have grown flowers for most of my life helping my mom and dad in their gardens but at our house in Edmonton we had a very weedy, small front flower bed and a small vegetable garden area. 

This just wasn’t going to work so we got to work and built five, 4’x20’ raised beds which took up all of our back yard. We wanted to do this in a cost effective way so we utilized 2x4’s that were taken out of our basement (there was a lot of water damage and they were not going to be reused).

We then planted hundreds of dahlias tubers in light pinks, coral, and burgundy which I had started in the house in pots to give them a head start on the summer season.

In September we were rewarded with a number of dahlia blooms just in time for the wedding.

If you want to see some live footage from our wedding check out our video from Rhona Haas HERE

We have continued growing flowers in our backyard but have rotated what we are growing to ensure we are able to manage diseases and soil quality.