Sustainable arbor mechanics!

Arbors can be beautiful with no floral foam, and with a bit of preparation of your mechanics you can make it as dense or as airy as you’d like. Scroll to the bottom for my video talking about the mechanics of this arbor!

When you are just doing a floral installation in the corner, top, or side of an arbor, you will want to keep your mechanics smaller so that you can cover them up and you get enough stems going in different directions, without needing to use a ton of extra stems and go over budget. For a full arbor you could start using taller/larger vessels like smaller buckets or funeral cones full of water, because you will have the space to be covering those up as you cover the entire arbor with greenery and florals.

In the video below I will show you some of the smaller mechanics for a corner arbor installation with no floral foam. You can use a few of these depending on the brief and budget for the arbor florals.

Farmers' Markets in Hamilton Ontario where you can buy flowers!

I was chatting with a customer today about where to find locally grown flowers in Hamilton. They were surprised when I told them that the florists in the Hamilton Farmer’s Market (the indoor space run by the City on York Blvd) are not flower farmers, and they even sell a large number of imported flowers. Same goes for flower shops and grocery stores flower sections. For locally grown flowers (in addition to Floral & Brick’s flowers of course 😅 - we just sell through our online shop at the moment), I suggested that she check out the smaller farmers’ markets in different neighbourhoods around the city, because flower vendors at those markets are growers. So I thought I’d put together a list of the markets that have a flower vendor. If I didn’t include a market in this list it’s because they don’t have a flower person either for this year or in general.

There are also nearby small-scale farms that have flower farm stands that you can pick up flowers from but I think I’ll put those in a different blog post in the future because it will take me a bit to compile them all.

Locke Street Farmers’ Market: Corner of Herkimer and Locke. Saturdays 9am-12pm.

Durand Market: 165 Charlton Ave W. Wednesdays 3-7pm.

Waterdown Farmer’s Market: 79 Hamilton St N. Saturdays 8am-1pm.

Ancaster Farmers’ Market: at the Ancaster Memorial Art Centre. Wednesday 3-7pm.

Dundas Farmers’ Market: 11 Millers Lane. Thursdays 2-6pm.