Blooming Boulevards, with Hoffmann Hayes and Agritecture, is in the initial stages of developing an accessible community greenhouse plan for individuals and organizations who share a common goal to create a more sustainable city by growing native plants that mitigate pollinator habitat loss and vegetables to enhance food security. The work is being generously supported by Trillium Foundation's Resilient Communities Fund.
We are reaching out to you directly as we're looking for leads on potential sites for greenhouses, or greenhouses that are underused or empty in the City of Mississauga. If you know of potential sites or have ideas for how to identify potential sites, we would appreciate hearing from you at this critical stage in the project planning. Preferred sites would have indoor growing space and, ideally:
Indoor space for office, storage, and education
Parking
Public transit accessible
Accessible washrooms (on site or nearby)
Outdoor growing space
Why Blooming Boulevards needs a greenhouse
Our volunteers push aside furniture to make space to grow native plants in their basements, spare rooms, porches, and balconies. We've reached a limit in how many we can grow: 30 volunteers = 8,000 plants. But to extend the scope of our services (meadows! gardens in parks!) we'll need a facility where we can grow LOTS more. A community greenhouse will give us the space we need to really make a difference in helping biodiversity in Mississauga.
See how we are maxed out:
Above: BB propagation volunteer Sheila Clarke germinating seeds in her basement set up, using loaned equipment we supplied. We trained 30 volunteers this year, with no central facility to work in. All training had to be online.
Below: Sheila delivering her seedlings to BB HQ. We collect the intake from all the propagators on our front and back decks! This year there were 8,000 seedlings! Seedlings are ready to be donated to garden stewards for their new boulevard gardens.
