Niagara’s 25-Mile Flowers
Local people working to bring beautiful plants to market
Here in Niagara, we are blessed to live in an area that produces tender fruit, vegetables, grapes and world acclaimed wines.
Niagara is also home to 80 to 90 per cent of Canada’s floral growers — you’ve seen some of the greenhouses as you buzz along the QEW in Lincoln, but if you are like me, you’ve never been inside to see what they are growing.
Before you head out to buy flowers for Mother’s Day, let me introduce you to Niagara’s 25-Mile Flowers — plants grown by local greenhouses, all within a 25-mile radius of our tables.
I was treated to a behind-thescenes tour of three local greenhouses (just the tip of the proverbial iceberg), where family pride, craftsmanship, mutual respect and stateof-the-art facilities are key to their success.
Our first stop was Sunrise Greenhouses, a family run operation founded by Robert & Francis Bierhuizen in 1982 in Vineland.
“We grow specialty potted plants year round, we are known for introducing new varieties into North America,” Robert Bierhuizen said as he handed me a business card, designed to look like a plant pic. Nice touch.
We stepped into the greenhouse brimming with violet-blue campanulas. “They are ready for the spring market, but we sell them year round as potted plants,” Bierhuizen explained.
Campanulas are a perennial. They can be planted in the garden or tuck them in a planter on your patio. The facility produces 17 crops including: Heather, Jasmine, Campanula, Sun Star (Ornithogalum), Caladium, Dwarf Hydrangea and Spanish Lavender.
As we toured the 23,400-squaremetre facility, I was impressed by the advanced technology.
“Computerized climate control, automatic watering, we are installing artificial intelligence cameras, they will be moving up and down the aisles every hour so that we can monitor the plants from cutting to finished product. The robots will be operational by July. There will be 150 cameras in the greenhouse. Water is the drive behind the automation.”
Along with a staff of 25 to 30, two of the Bierhuizen’s adult children are following in their parent’s footsteps. Their daughter handles marketing and sales and their son is general manager.
“Not too many young people are interested in coming in to agriculture or greenhouses as a whole, it’s worrisome.”
Sandra Easton, mayor of Lincoln, joined us for the tour.
“Robert is being very humble. The reason his children want to work in this industry is because he is making it a wonderful future for them. They want innovation and to use technology and make it efficient. It’s nice to see it here, it is local.”
We finished the tour in the warehouse, where staff were sorting, adding pot covers, UPC codes and labels ready for shipment. We would see racks of Sunrise Greenhouses product at our next stop, Bayview Flowers.
Clarence Van Staalduinen, president of Bayview Flowers, was ready with a warm handshake in the foyer of this Jordan Road facility. With a staff of 120 throughout the company, including greenhouses in Simcoe and another just down the road, Bayview Flowers has been here for 18 years.
“We specialize in growing specialty crops: potted gerberas and varieties of cut Gerbera Picolini, ” said Van Staalduinen.
It also partners with local greenhouses to co-ordinate distribution and shipping through its facility to markets across North America.
Enjoying pride of place, historical photos in the foyer trace the family’s early years in the floral market.
“Our family ended up in Brantford after weaving through a few parts of Ontario. My dad immigrated from Holland and had a market garden growing gladiolas, going door-todoor to sell them with no luck, until it was Friday when people had money. He realized that people would buy flowers if they had a little extra money. He started a greenhouse in Brantford, but Lincoln was a better place for us,” said Van Staalduinen.
From the foyer, we wove through a maze of offices before stepping in to the warehouse. Hundreds of racks of plants, all prepped and ready for the Mother’s Day market. Van Staalduinen gestured across the the vast warehouse space. “The good story here is that this is all local product,” he said.
I was impressed. Local people working together to bring beautiful, healthy plants to a very competitive market.
Our final stop for the morning tour was CosMic Plants where brothers Neil and Mike Van Steekelenburg specialize in growing orchids — beautiful, decadent orchids. Mike was our guide for the day’s visit.
The Van Steekelenburg family can trace the family history of growing fruit, vegetables and flowers to their great grandfather in the Netherlands.
“We started on Maple Grove Road in Beamsville in 2004 with 60,000 square feet, small for this industry. We wouldn’t have been able to start on that scale in Holland because the competition would have knocked us out.”
Today, CosMic Plants has expanded to 28,800 square metres (320,000 square feet) between two locations and has a staff of 40 people.
“In the late-’90s and early 2000s, orchids became very popular in Holland. They were an expensive collector item. Propagators and breeders made orchids more feasible for commercial growing, prices came down and orchids became more accessible to the public. We saw the potential and thought if we take the technology and knowledge that we have (their parents had greenhouses in Holland) and bring it to Canada, we would have an edge.”
Orchids are long lasting and easy to grow as a house plant; they can bloom from three to five months. CosMic grows some 45 to 50 varieties.
“Whites are still the orchid that is preferred for interior scapes,” Van Steekelenburg explained.
It takes 18 months to grow an orchid from tissue culture to mature, flowering plant, 14 months for smaller pots — it’s all very high tech.
“The greenhouses are climatecontrolled: lighting with three different levels, grow lights, irrigation for tropical rainstorm, humidity, misting, fans for air circulation, bottom heat, air conditioning when it gets too hot.”
What can we do?
When shopping for for flowers for your table, patio or garden, look for tags showing where the product was grown. Keep an eye out for the PickOntario labelling, not just for flowers, also for locally grown produce. Let’s all do our part to support 25Mile Flowers.