When Gord Sawchuck visited his greenhouse last week he found it empty and lifeless, not full of colour and smelling of soil like it should have been at this time of year.
But a neighbourly gesture is about to change that.
High Q Greenhouses, a competing operation, will be running Fred’s Flowers this season, while Gord’s wife and principle grower Lidia Sawchuck battles cancer in a St. Albert hospice.
With her husband lacking the green thumb necessary to run the greenhouse on his own – “I can name about 18 flowers on a good day and get about nine right,” said Gord – and the mom-and-pop operation lacking the resources to pay for another grower, the site has sat inactive since Lidia was diagnosed in August.
“We thought, especially if there were no plants in there, the business would depreciate tremendously,” said Michiel Verheul, owner of High Q, who kept a watchful eye on the family’s situation.
After the Sawchuks made the tough decision to sell, Verheul offered to grow and sell starter plants out of Fred’s Flowers this season as a way to prevent vacancy and retain property value.
Part of the proceeds, 10 per cent, will also go to the Sawchuck family, whose main source of income was the greenhouse.
“High Q has been a blessing. We’re truly thankful,” said Gord. “It shows that our greenhouse is still viable. We also haven’t had any money coming in since my wife got sick, so this makes a difference to us personally too.”
This season would have marked the Fred’s Flower’s eighth year of business, and the first of actually turning a profit.
Lidia built a strong client base over the years – one that extended north into Fort McMurray and across the B.C. border. She was known for carrying the most unusual stock, from Christmas roses – which bloom in -5C under five centimeters of snow – to passion flowers, an exotic vine that blooms often but for only a day at a time; to jasmine shrubs and black petunias.
“Growers would tell us ‘don’t buy stuff that you like, buy stuff that sells,’” said Gord. But his wife wouldn’t listen – too big was her passion for flowers.
“She would say, ‘But I like that stuff. And if nobody buys it, we have seven acres and I have a husband that will make me flower beds.’”
Out of 19 flowerbeds (they started with two), not one is planted with these unusual species. “The stuff that nobody would buy, everybody bought,” said Gord.
Verheul hopes the greenhouse will continue to bring Lidia joy as she fights Stage 4 cancer in her brain, lymph nodes and lungs.
“We really wanted them to have a light,” he said. “We’re hoping Gord can go to Lidia and say ‘Remember this person? She’s always bought plants from us. She’s planting her garden in pink this year.’”
Fred’s Flowers will open Saturday, May 7. Weekend hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Weekdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
