“Every year, we grow more than 10 million tulips. When we hit our stride, we can plant up to 250,000 hand-planted tulips every day,” proudly says Ann Carrière, Business Development Manager, Vanco Flowers Ltd. The company is located in Prince Edward Island. Ann Carriere lives in Montreal. She is familiar with the business she has seen grow over the past decade.
The company is located a 20-minute drive east of Charlottetown, the capital of the island, once called “the garden of the gulf”. Originally a potato producer, Vanco Farms started growing tulips in 2006, with Vanco Flowers.
Everything is grown in gigantic greenhouses, almost 90,000 square feet. The bulbs are planted and then stored in the cold for six weeks to simulate winter. They are then taken out to put them in the greenhouse in order to reproduce spring and trigger growth. The hundreds of rows of flowers are completely automated, to move them in turn, to be cut by hand. Vanco Flowers tulips are sold in Quebec, Ontario, and even the northern United States, and transported through a fleet of trucks managed by the company itself.
Vanco Flowers has developed a know-how that allows it to overcome the climatic challenges of the region. This is one of the reasons why Bastiaan Arendse, co-owner of the company, arrived from the Netherlands to bring his expertise. The man is creative and full of new ideas to develop the company, such as growing straw to heat the greenhouses, which allows the company to be energy self-sufficient.
Yet despite the success story of Vanco Flowers, Prince Edward Island does not have dedicated aid to support this industry, says Vicky Tse, communications officer at the Department of Economic Development, Prince Edward Island Innovation and Commerce.
FleuraMetz is located in an industrial area of Saint-Laurent. It is one of nine flower wholesalers in Quebec, whose mission is to order flowers and then sell them to 700 florists in the province. Behind the walls of the building are the refrigerators where the flowers are kept, loading areas for the trucks and the administrative offices.
The company is also one of the distributors of Vanco Flowers tulips.
Some 30% of the flowers sold at FleuraMetz are imported from Ecuador, explains Alex Léveillé, installed in a large meeting room which serves as his office. In Canada, flower imports from Colombia and Ecuador together account for 70% of imported flowers, which themselves account for more than three-quarters of the flowers sold. To reach the country, the flowers are transported in refrigerated planes to Miami, Florida. Then, trucks, also refrigerated, will cross the United States and part of the country to reach wholesalers in Quebec and Ontario.
With examples of large-scale greenhouse cultivation in the country, one can imagine the opportunities for economic development.
The Niagara region of Ontario is known for its wine route, but there are also many farms, including flower crops. Palatine Fruit
Eva Schmitz is the co-owner of Palatine Fruit
According to Statistics Canada, Ontario was the largest grower and largest seller of cut flowers in the country in 2022.
Eva Schmitz’s farm is one of the only roses growing in the Niagara region. But the rose is in direct competition with the countries of the South: “Even if you don’t feel the competition at the shop, you really realize it when you go to the auction. Flowers from abroad are a real problem. People in Niagara travel to the farm, but for people in Toronto, for example, it’s more complex. They make do with what they find close to home. »
Despite the obstacles in the market, Eva Schmitz is proud to have succeeded in growing roses in her region: “It doesn’t matter who works on the farm, or which customers come to buy them, everyone has a smile. Flowers make us happy and happy. It is truly a privilege to work with a product like this. »
The number of flower farms has tripled in five years in Quebec. In the majority of cases, these are small craft businesses. However, the industry is getting organized and perfecting its know-how.
“We are about to live our second season. We know more about what to expect, we are more in control and better prepared,” exclaims with a smile Caroline Vouligny, owner of the Pivoine Capano farm in Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, near Quebec City. She embarked on the adventure and bought this farm in 2021.
The farm which is located along the river exclusively grows peonies. “It’s an early flower, we need a lot of varieties to offer it as long as possible. She grows more than 200 varieties, on a 1.5 hectare plot of land with 12,000 peony plants. In total, the harvest will last six weeks. Intense work accomplished in a short time.
Consumers may have become accustomed to finding flowers all year round through imports, but Caroline Vouligny doesn’t see seasonality as a constraint.
For her, the ephemeral aspect of a local flower is synonymous with discoverability: “If you start to really care about seasonal flowers, you can discover lots of new varieties, rather than clinging to a flower that you we hope to have as long as possible. »
Caroline Vouligny is clear: “Each farm is unique, there is no model flower farm. Recently, mutual aid and solidarity between farms have developed. With the Les Fermières-Fleuristes du Québec Facebook group created four years ago and which has nearly 600 members, flower owners exchange views, share their respective realities and help each other in their business.
“Cut flower growers are getting organized to work together better. One of the objectives is to raise awareness among florists and wholesalers to encourage local purchases,” explains Caroline Martineau, regional adviser in agro-environment and ornamental horticulture at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Quebec (MAPAQ). . When Caroline Martineau started the inventory of flower farms in Quebec a few years ago, there were about forty. Today, there would be more than 120 productions.
MAPAQ does not yet offer assistance for cut flower farms. But producers who are starting out can take advantage of the support available to agricultural businesses.
“What I’m noticing is that the middle is sorting itself out. Before, everyone was in their own little business. But I think that by coming together, it will make the flowers here talk more, make them known to people, ”she confides in a determined tone.
It is in this approach that the third edition of the Week of Flowers Cultivated in Quebec is organized throughout the province, which ends on July 16. A great opportunity to promote local flowers.
The Aliments du Québec logo makes it easy to identify products from here. But according to Caroline Martineau, the market is not yet mature enough for a Flowers of Quebec certification: “We should create an audit office. This generates costs and binding specifications. »
The identification of Quebec flowers is also one of the five recommendations proposed by Les Producteurs en Serre du Québec, in a report published in December 2022.
The MAPAQ representative concedes, however, that promoting Quebec flowers, as is done for Quebec strawberries for example, is an idea to consider. As for the certification, it will still have to wait.
