Showing posts with label westbrook greenhouses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label westbrook greenhouses. Show all posts

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Garage Sale Today

There don't seem to be as many garage sales as a few years ago.  Is that really the case?  Do we sell more stuff on Craig's List and Kijiji now?  I didn't see any statistics, but did find that there is a lot of advice on what to sell, what to buy, when to have it, how to advertise it, what are the top deals and treasures...

Our wonderful plant store, Cole's, is having a parking lot sale very shortly.  Starting at 7:00am!  They have purchased the stock of one of Westbrook Floral's Beamsville location greenhouses  - thousands and thousands of those decorative little plant holders and garden things that you see in shops.  Except this is thousands all at once.   Westbrook is the largest floral greenhouse grower in Niagara.

"In 1959, William Vermeer Sr. founded a small 14,000 square foot greenhouse operation. The early years of production included orchids, cut chrysanthemums, cut roses and sweethearts, cut lilies and carnations as well as a few potted plants. From these humble beginnings, Westbrook has expanded to become the large complete floral wholesaler we are today. Growing in over 1.5 million square feet of greenhouse space and 250,000 square feet of production and office space Westbrook services customers all over North America."


What made Westbrook sell off this inventory?  Westbrook made the headlines when it recently sold one of its greenhouse facilities to Up Cannabis Inc., who will be growing medical marijuana.  The article is HERE.  I've heard stories of greenhouse growers who are planning to convert to medical marijuana - I hope it isn't so.  I would hate to lose our only producer of Medenilla plants and  one of our major Kalanchoe producers.

The major difference, of course, is security.  I was told by one of the Vineland Research staff that security is a greater cost than plant production.

“What we need to do at that site is add in the proper security,” said Wilgar. In order to adhere to Health Canada’s tight security regulations for marijuana production, they will have to install hundreds of cameras, a laser detection system, a vault to hold the finished product and more."


I guess I won't be asking to take pictures in a laser detection facility with hundreds of cameras.