Sudbury company sells wildflower seeds that help with mine reclamation efforts

A Sudbury business is growing and distributing perennial wildflower seeds for companies looking for ways to re-green mining sites as part of remediation efforts.

Northern Wildflowers has been in business for 10 years and is steadily growing as a supplier for reclamation efforts and retail sales of seeds that are 100 per cent Canadian.

Next week, Northern Wildflowers will be an exhibitor at the Central Canada Mineral Exploration Convention in Winnipeg to share information about wildflowers, in particular the benefits they bring to reclamation efforts.

"We want to let them know that the product and the expertise is out there to help them use seed-based restoration on their remediation their closure plans for the mines that they operate," said Jenny Fortier, a biologist and owner of Northern Wildflowers.

“(We can) help them to increase the biodiversity and create habitat for more pollinators throughout the mining process and at the end of the mining process.”

On her farm in Whitefish, Fortier grows wildflowers and harvests the seeds, which are native to Canada and the United States.

"Wildflowers are the plants that have relationships with wildlife,” she said.

“So these are the native plants that belong to an area historically. And so those are the plants that pollinators and native bees will use. Birds, small mammals, those are all the plants that they have relationships with.”

Northern Wildflowers said it recently expanded to selling its own line of vegetable seeds that are purely sourced from Canadian farmers.

"That was really dear to us that we could offer a line of vegetable seeds that wasn't sourced in Asia or South America because that is where a lot of the seeds we see on store shelves is coming from," said Fortier.

Over the past decade, Northern Wildflowers said it has distributed seeds to every province in Canada for reclamation projects including, Porcupine and Cochrane in northern Ontario.