A lifelong dream, a little bit of wildness, and a whole lot of flowers.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to live on an acreage with horses in the backyard.
Not a perfect acreage. Not a manicured estate. I pictured something with a little wildness to it—a place where the horses could wander, where the grass could grow long, and where wildflowers would come up every spring.
Five years ago, that dream finally came true.
My husband and I found our way to a piece of Alberta countryside that would become Songbird Ranch. It was, in all honesty, a bit of a mess when we arrived. The fences were mostly falling down, the old barn was dark and tired, and much of the land was buried beneath years of weed overgrowth.
But then spring came.
And suddenly, there were flowers everywhere.
The flowers were already here.
I had always imagined wildflower meadows when I thought about having a place of our own, so discovering what was growing naturally on the property felt like a gift.
There were clovers and wild yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, mountain arnica, goldenrod, prairie smoke—and, of course, wild roses.
It was the kind of landscape I had pictured in my head for years, only I hadn’t known it was waiting for us here.
Since then, my husband and I have slowly been bringing the ranch back to life. We’ve repaired fences, worked on the old barn, cleared and improved parts of the property, and started shaping the land into the home we had always imagined.
And, naturally, I started growing flowers.
I’ve been growing flowers for as long as I can remember.
My love of flowers started long before Songbird Ranch.
I still remember the first flower I ever picked out and planted myself: a purple bearded iris. I was so proud when it returned the following spring.
Then my dad accidentally ran it over with the lawn mower.
Fortunately, that little iris had other plans. It came back.
I suppose I’ve been taking that as a good gardening lesson ever since.
My grandmother’s garden left its mark on me, too. Her property would be covered in lupines every spring, and they were one of her favourite flowers. When I began creating gardens of my own, I planted a bed of lupines in her memory.
I think that is why flowers have always felt like more than something beautiful to me.
They carry stories.
They remind us of people and places. They return with the seasons. They can make an ordinary day feel a little less ordinary.
And there is something wonderfully hopeful about putting a tiny seed in the ground and trusting that, months from now, it will become something beautiful.
Growing a flower farm
The cultivated flower fields at Songbird Ranch came about rather naturally.
After years of dreaming about gardens and growing flowers for the sheer joy of it, I started wondering what might happen if we gave a little more of the land over to them.
So we did.
What began as a love of flowers has slowly become a small flower farm, where I get to spend my days doing what I have always loved: growing things.
I love the whole process—the anticipation of seeds germinating, the first flowers of spring, the rush of blooms in the middle of summer, and those September days when the garden somehow manages to keep going even as the rest of the landscape begins to turn toward fall.
I love trying new varieties and discovering what thrives here. I love the flowers that behave exactly as expected, and the ones that completely surprise me. I love walking the fields in the morning and deciding what is ready to pick.
And I love that the garden is never quite under my control.
I can make all the plans I want, but the weather, the soil, the bees, and the flowers always get a say.
Flowers, grown with a sense of place
That is what I hope you feel when you receive flowers from Songbird Ranch.
These aren’t flowers chosen from a catalogue and ordered in from somewhere else. They are grown here, in this particular patch of Alberta, in this particular season.
A July bouquet will look different from one in August. The flowers in your wedding may be completely different from those in someone else’s. Sometimes a variety I had been eagerly waiting for will bloom late. Sometimes one I thought would be a supporting flower steals the entire show.
I think that’s part of the magic.
We grow a changing collection of specialty cut flowers and foliage, and we let the garden tell us what it has to offer.
Welcome to Songbird Ranch
This farm is still becoming what I dreamed it could be.
The fences are better. The old barn has a little more life in it. The horses are in the back pasture. The wildflowers still come up every spring, and now there are rows of cultivated flowers growing alongside them.
And every year, there are more flowers.
Songbird Ranch is my little corner of the world where all of these things come together: horses in the pasture, wild roses along the fence line, flowers growing in rows, and a whole lot of memories being made along the way.
I’m so glad you found us.
Come see what’s blooming.
