A blooming community

Maria José Arias, The Flower Market 2023, Kraft Paper & Stickers

As the city’s first outdoor flower market, Toronto Flower Market (TFM), the creation of Natasa Hansen (Kajganic), celebrates locally grown flowers and plants through both its monthly markets and collaborative projects across Canada. Beyond commerce, Toronto Flower Market is a community—creating community—a space for people to experience the transformative power of flowers together.

Maria José Arias, senior designer at Frontier and 2025 Applied Arts Photography & Illustration Awards judge, highlights Natasa's creative vision and efforts in building community.

Sometimes it is hard to imagine something that doesn’t exist. That is true of TFM both from its inception and from the ephemeral nature of the market - it is a place with so much beauty and vibrancy, a space suspended in time before it disappears only to reappear again, each incarnation similar yet different, reimagined by the people who create and experience it giving the market dimension, language and seasonality.

 Maria José Arias 2022, Carla Poirier 2025 and Courtney Wotherspoon 2013, The Flower Market.

Success for the market exists on a timeline unusual in today’s world of immediately measurable results. From its inception, Natasa has worked to build a 75-year vision of paced growth and experimentation, creating an entity that lives and breathes on its own while remaining indistinguishable and inseparable from those who comprise it.

The design of the flower market brand has had a similar ephemeral approach to its progenitor, in many ways mirroring the very nature of the market and (the nature) of flowers themselves. Rather than a fixed set of guidelines, TFM design is a project to create expectation and a sense of longing for something that will inevitably end, and thus, each iteration has its own emotional tenor and feeling.

Maria José Arias 2024 (Photography Neil Rimmer)

TFM invites each designer to interpret the essence of the market through their own aesthetic and artistic sensibility, resulting in a free and transformative process and outcome. In 2013, TFM was introduced and established in West Queen West with Courtney Wotherspoon’s abundant mixed-media flower collages. In its next incarnation, it celebrated the return from isolation with the much-needed joy and playfulness of Maria José Arias’s creations. The most recent design evokes a sense of ephemerality and a dream-like haze, featuring Carla Poirier.

Equally considered is how people engage with the design and artwork outside of the market. Subway poster placements to brighten a commuter’s day. Printed kraft paper-wrapped bouquets flow through the streets of Toronto on the market day, while ‘hug a flower’ is an open invitation found on baseball hats. The new market season has been teased by a billboard marking the location on Queen W, with hand-painted sandwich boards giving care tips to recently promoted caretakers. With a modest budget, the intention is to replicate and spread the good-natured vibes of market day into the lives of people every day. 

w. TorontoFlowerMarket.ca  | IG @torontoflowermarket

Beautiful initiative and work! Thank you for sharing Maria.