Local flowers and sustainability are core to The Collective. Over the years, Jaimie has thoughtfully curated a pool of Ontario growers that produce field-grown flowers and foliage. You won’t find any imported flowers or invasive species purchased through The Collective, despite how beautiful invasive plants, like phragmites, can be and how in-demand they currently are for weddings.

Many growers that are part of The Local Flower Collective plant organically, which means they don’t use pesticides or herbicides, and are focused on natural ways to keep their land healthy. “We are zero waste, as much as possible,” Jaimie explained of The Collective, “That means we actually don’t keep stock. Everything that is cut from the growers and brought to the studio is pre-sold. So typically, we don’t have anything left over.”

“Oh my gosh,” Jaimie exclaimed, “everywhere. I can’t think of a place that they don’t come from. They come from Israel, Africa, Italy, all over the United States, anywhere in Europe. Holland is obviously number one. Colombia. Ecuador for roses…it’s incredible and the variety you get is amazing.

“As a florist, sometimes I look at them and I am so happy to have them, but then I also realize the footprint that it creates shipping them over here.”

On top of the carbon footprint associated with international shipping, in order to have the flowers shipped, purchased by the florist and end up on your table still alive, there is often a chemical process involved – especially with roses. When the flowers are cut “they get placed into a chemical which puts them into stasis. The florist picks the flowers up from the wholesaler, cuts and rehydrates them and then sells them to you.”

Since the Canadian winter doesn’t allow for field-grown flowers year-round, The Collective only runs from May – October. You can still shop local in the winter but the flowers are grown in large-scale commercial greenhouses, which require more energy and pesticides than field-grown flowers.

“Typically, these greenhouses aren’t organic because everything is grown in a hoop house and if any bugs get in, it’s a disaster as everything spreads. As a result, these large-scale commercial greenhouses can use some sort of pesticide, herbicide or spray.” When purchasing flowers in the winter, consider this: “A local greenhouse is still better than imported anything” due to the carbon footprint of imports. Jaimie also noted how some Ontario greenhouses are making environmentally conscious decisions like converting to solar power and introducing “beneficial insects” instead of pesticides for pest management.

The emphasis on sustainability extends to Jaimie’s wedding florist business, Leaf & Bloom. The average North American wedding contributes 400 lbs of garbage and 63 tonnes of CO2; the emissions are equivalent to what 4-5 people create in an entire year. Contributing to this is non-organic waste from wedding flowers, including plastic wrapping, cardboard boxes and floral foam. Jaimie underscored how as a florist, “floral foam is easy to use. If you know it’s going to be a hot day and your flowers need to stay hydrated, your first choice is to use foam because you know it’s going to keep your stems lasting longer.” However, floral foam is made of micro-plastic, is non-recyclable and takes hundreds or thousands of years to degrade.

In an effort to reduce harmful environmental impacts within the wedding industry, The Local Flower Collective focuses on creating no-waste weddings.

Jaimie stated that educating consumers on locally grown flowers and sustainability is the most challenging part. For example, she can stick to a colour variety but may not be able to provide the exact flowers that the customer is looking for, simply because it’s impossible to predict what’s going to bloom locally each month. Additionally, customers may show her a flower arch on Pinterest and she has let them know she can’t do it because it involves floral foam. “Essentially, we draw the line there.”

“There are so many things you can do with local foliage and flowers that don’t involve floral foam. Flowers come straight to our door, in buckets, in water. There’s no plastic, there’s no cardboard. There’s just little elastics around the stems. In a typical wedding, the only garbage we produce, other than organic waste which decomposes, is a little bit tape used to hold chicken wire to vases.”

“It’s challenging because it requires a little bit of forethought in design and also curving your client’s expectations between what they see on Pinterest and what we can actually give them. What we tell them is – if local and sustainable isn’t important to you, then maybe go to someone else who can just duplicate what you see on Pinterest. Typically, we find that a lot of the people that come to us just say ‘no, I don’t want to create waste’, which is great and those are clients we want.”