Between a cold climate and a short growing season, Timmins is not exactly known for its wide variety of flowers. But Sarah Popovic, owner and operator of the Northern Fleurista, might just change that.
The Northern Fleurista, established last year, is a flower farm that grows local flowers using sustainable farming practices. Popovic, who comes from a family of many gardeners, had already been growing vegetables for years before she decided to give flowers a try. The hobby — and her steadily increasing number of flower beds — soon outgrew her small yard, prompting Popovic and her family to up-size. That was about a decade ago, and Popovic’s flowers have grown into a fully-fledged side hustle since then.
“Two or three years ago I made my first little bouquet, just picking around my perennial beds. I posted it on Facebook and everyone went kind of crazy, and I was like, ‘There's something there. People like this kind of stuff,’” Popovic says.
“I thought I was just going to grow a little wee spot in my vegetable garden for some flowers, and I started way too many seeds. It just kind of became this thing where I had more flowers than I knew what to do with,” she says.
As a solution for what to do with all those flowers, Popovic reached out to a friend at the local farmers market, who invited her to join them as a vendor.
“I absolutely always liked the idea of being part of the community in that way,” Popovic says.
Her business is filling a niche that Timmins didn’t realize it needed. The flowers are harvested sustainably and without chemicals, and she also grows “fancier” varieties than those that can usually be found around town. They are also, of course, locally grown, which is more environmentally friendly and leaves a smaller carbon footprint than having flowers shipped internationally.
“People want different things. People don’t want standard grocery store flowers,” she says. “They’re fancier. A tulip isn’t just a tulip, there’s doubles and peonies and fringed and parrots and all these things that people have never been able to see before. To bring that to our community is kind of special.”
Popovic has been practicing naturopathy for 20 years and tries to carry some of the principles she has picked up from her career to her gardening. The community has been nothing but supportive in that regard, with locals donating everything from compost, manure, leaves, and grass clippings to nourish the soil, to vessels, vases, and mason jars for her floral arrangements. Popovic makes a point of reusing and recycling where possible and avoids using plastics as much as she can.
“The local community has been fantastic,” she says. “I’m going around the city with my truck and collecting whatever they don’t want to have so it doesn’t end up in the landfill. If you’re not going to [use it], someone else should use it.”
“I use regenerative practices as much as possible. It’s not perfect, but you try to leave everything better than how you found it. If you don’t replenish things, especially with the soil, you’re just taking every time you grow something. You’re removing something from the earth, so you need to put something back in order to get that back next year,” Popovic says.
As any business owner, Popovic hopes to continue expanding the Northern Fleurista in the future, branching out into nearby communities, servicing more events, and growing more complicated things that “everybody usually kills.”
Although she never intended to become a florist or anything of the sort, she has found that she enjoys making arrangements just as much as growing and wants to take more courses in floral design. Popovic says that, for now, she has no intention of leaving her day job to grow flowers full-time.
“Right now, it’s what I can do on the side on nights and weekends, pretty much from March to November. Every spare minute that I’m not at my job I’m working on it,” she says. “I’m blessed to have two passions, and that I can have the energy and health to be able to do both.”
To buy bouquets or find out where The Northern Fleurista will be set up next, follow them on Facebook here.
