Welcome to Garden Party!!   We are Peter and Theresa.  We started Garden Party in 1985 (I suspect before you were born.)
At first Garden Party was a home-based plant business. But then nurseries and box stores exploded, and we couldn’t match that pricing.

So we switched to growing organic vegetables as a ‘side hustle’ (but they weren’t called that back then). While working full time off the farm, Theresa partnered with Canadian Organic Growers to run a demonstration farm at the site called Diversity Gardens. This demonstration farm helped people learn about growing vegetables organically. We still remember the early days in the organic movement fondly – and are still inspired by the pioneers who build that movement (before things like email and the internet!)

After Theresa retired (the first time) from here day job in 2008, she started an organic CSA (aka ‘food box) and food hub on the site. But, Theresa injured herself (tripping while carrying crates of eggplants) and the injury just didn’t heal. Sadly, we thought Theresa would have to give up farming – it was just too painful. So she retired the second time.

She went back to school and completed her doctorate in Economic Geography at the University of Waterloo (in local food systems).  Then she received a Postdoctoral position at the Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems studying how digitization of food systems was starting to affect small scale farmers. (Wow – who knew all of that would come true!?) As part of this work, Theresa worked with an amazing network of like-minded farmers, coders, and designers to launch  Open Food Network Canada.   While she was doing all that academic stuff,  miraculously, her injury repaired itself.  (That’s strange – right?)   So – she retired the third time (from academics this time) and started farming again.

BUT we wanted to do something different this time around. (You can’t step into the same river twice.) So we started growing specialty cut flowers.  We met the most AMAZING community of flower farmers and floral designers who just keep inspiring us. Theresa found a creative side to her that she didn’t know she had. And it was a glorious new learning curve. (Theresa always does her best work when she is on a learning curve.) But flower farming is physically very demanding,  and honestly we just couldn’t keep going at this scale and pace.

So – we retired for the fourth time.

But we realized that Theresa is very sad and can’t think properly if her hands are not dirty.  We both need to keep feeling the nature around us.   AND – we love the community of cut flower growers/farmers that is expanding in Canada. So – we needed a way to keep our hands dirty and stay close with this community.

And – we’ve found it. Ironically, the journey takes us full circle back to how Garden Party started – with little plants and seedlings, and sharing knowledge about regenerative and organic growing.

Now we focus on workshops and sales of plugs, tubers, roots, bulbs and seedlings for flower growers and farmers. And we’ll do this until we retire again.

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