RockGarden prepares to grow marijuana

When Andrew Rock was studying horticulture at Algonquin College, he assumed he would eventually get a job in urban agriculture, maybe creating living walls or rooftop gardens.

Then the federal government announced it would allow private businesses to grow and sell medical marijuana, and a family discussion turned into a plan for a business.

“I was watching the news,” said Rock’s mother, lawyer Deborah Hanscomb. She uses medical marijuana for chronic pain, but her only previous experience with gardening was growing cherry tomatoes and kale in the front yard of their Ottawa home, she says. “And it all just clicked.”

They filed an application with Health Canada to become medical marijuana growers in the spring of 2014.

Three years later, the mother-and-son team offer a tour of the industrial building in Carleton Place that houses their RockGarden Medicinals company.

Hanscomb’s husband, Allan Rock, the former president of the University of Ottawa and a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, is not involved in the business.

By July 2018, the government’s target date to legalize recreational marijuana, they hope to have an addition on the building, bringing the capacity to 20,000 square feet. That’s enough to produce 1,300 kilograms of cannabis a year. And employ 30 to 40 people. It’s all contingent on Health Canada approval. But RockGarden is nearing the end of the arduous application process, and the founders are optimistic they will have a licence this summer.

“To see it come alive is so exciting,” says Rock. At 29, he already has experience in the production of medical-grade cannabis on an industrial scale.

Rock spent two-and-half years working at Tweed, the huge medical marijuana plant in Smiths Falls, learning about growing, transplanting, pruning, harvesting, trimming. When he left that job in February to concentrate on RockGarden, Rock was a production manager. “It was a fantastic experience.”

Hanscomb, 70, RockGarden’s president, has shepherded the company through the application process. Of the 1,665 applications received for licences across Canada, only 45 have been approved by Health Canada.

Both Hanscomb and RockGarden chief financial officer Wynand Stassen say they’re glad it’s a rigorous process.