WILD THING ferme florale

02/10/2024

We'll be on Campus at Bishop's tomorrow with fresh and dried flowers as well as spring bulbs, some of our hand dyed silks, cards, balms and more!

Swing by to say hi, grab a little floral pick me up and see what the other vendors have to offer!


On sera sur le Campus de Bishop's demain avec des bouquets de fleurs séchées et fraîches, des bulbes printannières, des baumes, des cartes, des soies teintes à la main et plus!

Passez dire allô et vous ramasser un petit peu de bonheur fleuri et voir tout ce qu'ont à offrir les autres marchands!

🍅💜Bishop's University Campus Farmers' Market
Join us next Thursday September 26th from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm in the Quad for the 2024 Edition of our now traditional yearly Farmer's Market! This event is meant to highlight the efforts made by our local agricultural community!
Find:
🍯 Local honey made directly on campus by Bishop's Bees
🍅 Local preserves made from the Educational Farm veggies by Bishop's University - Environment, Agriculture, and Geography Department students
🎨 Arts and crafts made by Bishop's University Fine Arts Department students
🧡 Crafts handmade by the Indigenous Student Support Center people
🧼 Various crafts made by our community of staff and students
🥬 Local veggies from Les Hôtes Épinettes, Ferme maraîchère biologique, forestière et d'élevage and from
🐔 Local eggs from Ferme l'étincelle
🍄 Local mushrooms from Le Réseau Souterrain - Champignonnière
🌻 Local flowers from WILD THING ferme florale and Les jardins d'etc
☕ Free fairtrade hot chocolate and educational kiosk with Carrefour de Solidarité Internationale
💚 Educational kiosk about various sustainability projects going on around campus!
*Please note that in case of rain the event will be postponed!
See you there! ✌️

13/02/2024

If you are in Lennoxville on Valentine's Day and are looking for some sustainable options to show your love with this year pop by Bishop's University between 10 and 2 tomorrow the 14th! Come find us indoors in the toasty warmth in front of Doolittle's Coop.

We'll have a limited quantity of our very first tulips of the year as well as dried flower bouquets, lip and hand balms and a few of our hand died silks!

There will also be Fairtrade chocolate bars available for purchase to sweeten up your gift and an education booth to learn all about why FairTrade is the way to go when it comes to buying chocolate!

Stop by to say hi & grab some goodies if you are around, we'd love to see you!

19/12/2023

Silver poplar, Sedum, Buplureum, Mountain Mint and Artemisia formed the base of what would become an early August Bridal Bouquet.

The colours and textures in this one make my heart happy.

There is so much beauty and magic in bouquets that comes from the plants we use as supporting members of the cast.

19/12/2023

My dad ( on instagram) made me these little "Wild Things" to pop throughout the gardens as rebar top protectors.

He sculpted 5 or 6 different heads and then cast multiples of them from a mould he made.

This little gnome fellow is hanging out in the Anthemis Tinctoria, Dyer's Chamomile.

The following slides are of other mid to late July blooms.

Astrantia, Sedum, Rudbeckia, Orlaya, Buplureum, Poppy Pods and Eringeron.

19/12/2023

June and July always make me feel a little droopy.

In June we've usually just made it out of trying to keep on top of sowing and planting crops we need for the summer and fall all the while trying to stay on top of harvesting, processing, packagin and delivering an enourmous wave of tulips.

In July the temps rise and working outdoors becomes far less pleasant than in the cooler days of spring and fall.

The flowers in the vase are so simple and yet so lovely to me.

Daisies and fleabane.

19/12/2023

Diana holding some of the later ranunculus.

A handful of JOY!

They always remind me of Sfogliatella, a beautiful and tasty italian pastry!

(If you don't know what they are I recommend hunting down the closest Italian bakery to you and tracking some down! Sometimes they go by the name Lobster Tail in North America.)

In Beebe sells chocolate hazelnut ones and pistacchio ones that I have a particular weakness for! Cut them lengthwise before eating for the best tastiest bite with just the right ratio of pastry to filling😁

Back to Ranunculus😅

The tuberous roots that we grow our ranuncs from are bred and produced by , brought to our continent by and make their way to us through
!

We start their waking up process in mid to late winter to get them in the ground outside as early as we can.

Their happy temp time is somewhere between about -2C (they can take down to -5C when not in bloom) and 17C.

With the shading set up I showed from a few posts back we manage to keep them producing at temperatures far warmer, but they definitely show more signs of stress and prepping for dormancy as the temperatures rise.

19/12/2023

Peonies are a long game plant in the cut flower world.

They take a couple years to get well established before you should harvest heavily off of them as their leaves grow on stalks they share with blooms.

If you were to harvest too many stems early on, your peonies might not have enough leaves to snag enough energy from the sun to put down the roots that'll help them make it from year to year.

After a couple years of disbudding most of the plants and letting them get a good root system going, next year most of these beauties should start pumping out more stalks i.e. more flowers and leaves, so more of the plant can be harvested and more happy peony blooms can make it home to you!

Looking forward to mid to late June for these pretties!

19/12/2023

In early July I had the pleasure of flowering up a number of Wanda Rozynski's vases in the context of an exhibition called "A Natural Life: The Gift" curated by at the in the woods by the river .

The exhibition ran for the duration of Ceramystic, a 10 day event where folks can view and purchase works from a number of amazing ceramicists all on the beautiful grounds of the Centre d'Art Rozynski in Way's Mills.

(They offer ceramics classes and workshops for those interested I recommend checking their page👆)

The little arrangements of local blooms were snuggled into their vases, stationned along a path under the dappled shade of the deciduous trees, amongst their cathedralesque trunks with the river singing alongside.

The cooling effect of the shade and the nearby river made the exhibition's location a refreshing one on the site and kept the flowers happier for longer despite being outdoors and subject to Mother Nature' whims.

19/12/2023

Our shading set up is simple and not plastic based.

We have one swath of jute running centered along the top of the arches, and another that has one edge fastened along the center.

When the season gets toasty, we start flipping the center pinned one from east to west around midday when the sun starts creeping onto the beds.

We also give them a good cold drink to knock down the soil temps.
We manage to keep our ranuncs going a little longer this way, which without a sizeable greenhouse within which to start them really early we find we need to take a couple measures to add alittle time to the tail end of the season.

19/12/2023

Ranunculus 😍

Corms courtesy of

Mid June

19/12/2023

Minou in the Ranunculus in June.

Supervise our work.

You can see in the back ground our jute shade cloths keeping the ranunc's cooler and happy for longer into the season.

19/12/2023

Early June we did a little Pop Up .bakery for Convocation 2023.

We made Bishop's University hued bouquets for graduates!

I loved seeing the joy our flowers brought people🥰

Flowers have a way of becoming a vessel to convey feelings and messages to loved ones for so many different kinds of occasions.

Something I hadn't thought about too much when I first got into flowers for the wonder and joy of planting and growing them; but that is now one of the main reasons I stick with it.

Getting to be a part of these moments is magical!

19/12/2023

Can't wait for these beauties to be back.
These were harvested in May in the field.

The past couple years we have been figuring out tulip forcing for earlier blooms.

Last year our first tulips were harvested around March 18th; allowing us to have tulips, (which I must admit are one of my very favourites), available for customers for a total of about 12 weeks! The beauty and JOY of it!

This year we are trying to have some for you for Valentine's Day.

Since it's our first year trialing for this early of a harvest date we won't be doing pre sales way ahead of time but rather as we get closer to the big day we'll share our progress and let you know if we succeeded and have flowers for you!

All our tulips have been planted for our 2024 harvest! Without the help of Diana my magical garden helper, I would have struggled to get it done alone. 🙌🙌 Thank you Diana!!!

Can't wait for all these beautiful blooms to make it out into your homes, their gentle joy and beauty settling into your day to day lives. 😊