The OFN team spoke with Rachel Schmitz from Palatine Roses to learn more about their shop and how they support the flower community. Palatine Roses is a local flower shop from Palatine Hill in Niagara-on-the-Lake. They are active community members producing lovely blooms and providing the community with tips and tools for local growing! Here is the interview below:

Q: Tell us about us about your relationship to flowers? How did you get started?

Palatine Fruit and Roses started growing roses for gardeners in the year 2000. In the following years we were often asked by customers if we would be willing to sell roses cut from our nursery production field. We declined because we didn’t want to jeopardize the quality of our nursery plants. At that time we had started working with Kordes Roses in Germany. Besides the regular garden roses, Kordes has a large hybridizing program specifically for outdoor grown cut roses. Through Kordes Roses we connected with one of the pioneers of outdoor cut rose production in Germany, the company  Raab Rosen. Several visits later, and with tremendous help from Stefan Raab personally, we started our first field dedicated to outdoor cut roses in the year 2006. We grow currently 3 acres of outdoor cut roses.

Q: How do you support the #slowflower movement?

We are very excited about the slow flower movement. It’s a perfect answer to ecological and social concerns about flower production in third world countries. More and more people display awareness about these issues and support local production and therefore help local producers like us to stay in business.

Q: How has COVID 19 impacted your shop?

Covid 19 forced us to pay more attention to our digital presence. OFN is a great tool to connect customers with local producers. 

Q: What is the community response like to your shop?

Our customers, florists as well as retail customers love the fact that they can buy fresh cut roses grown locally.

Q: How has OFN  helped in organizing and navigating sales during the pandemic?

OFN is the first online space we have used to sell our baked goods. I’m a little tech illiterate so all of our sales previous to COVID have been in person or through email. OFN is super easy to use and allows us to reach a wider audience than we have in the past. I love how the platform supports food transparency as well as creates an accessible platform for producers to sell. The support team is super helpful. It was sort of an accident that we fell into using OFN but it perfectly aligns with oy’s joys’ values and we plan to continue using the platform to sell moving forward. Also, it makes organizing our sales, issuing invoices so much easier (I am a convert, but still a little tech illiterate, ha!). 

Q: What’s in the future for Palatine Flowers and Fruits?

We are on a constant quest to  improve our production methods and ways to connect to our customers.