Blossoms on wheels Vintage ride revs up rainbow-hued appeal of fresh-cut-flower venture By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 19, 2026

Since the beginning of July, a Manitoba entrepreneur has been keeping busy, putting the petal to the metal.

Magwyer Herring is the founder of River’s Garden Co., a boutique venture offering fresh-cut flowers plucked from her and her husband Gerry’s three-acre property near Howden, south of the Perimeter Highway. Named for their seven-year-old son River, River’s Garden Co. has been turning heads for its rainbow assortment of zinnias, dahlias, roses and snap dragons, not to mention the distinctive manner in which Herring displays her mélange: from the back of a restored 1958 Chevrolet Apache pickup truck.

“The truck is definitely what draws folks in for starters, only as soon they notice the flowers, they’re like, wow, is that ever cool,” Herring says, standing next to her arresting, turquoise-and-white ride during a recent street festival in downtown Winnipeg.

It turns out that a green thumb is part of the 34-year-old’s DNA. Her maternal great-grandfather started his own fruit company, Talarico Fruits, in the early 1900s. As a child, her late mother helped out with the family biz and also worked for a similar operation in Kelowna, B.C., after moving west 15 years ago. That being said, Herring, the youngest of four siblings, was always more drawn to pools than garden plots while growing up in the West End.

Already a nationally-ranked swimmer at 16 years old, Herring, whose specialty was the butterfly stroke, relocated to Florida following high school to accept a swimming scholarship at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce. The Vincent Massey Collegiate alumnus spent two years there competing in National Junior College Athletic Association events before being hired as an instructor at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, Calif., teaching swimmers ages five to 75.

Herring describes her former position as a “dream” job that rekindled her competitive fire, so much so that she qualified for the Canadian Olympic swimming trials, held ahead of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Herring returned to Winnipeg following the trials. In 2017, she caught on with a boat-repair shop situated on Gunn Road — she’s presently its manager — and a short while later met Gerry, an automobile enthusiast whose parents’ garden centre was an original vendor at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market, when it was established in July 1988.

The couple initially lived together on a seven-acre spread in Randolph, 10 kilometres west of Steinbach. Desiring to be somewhat closer to Winnipeg, they purchased their current property in 2019, the year River was born. They moved there a year later once Gerry, “a man of many talents,” had finished gutting the existing home and refurbishing it to their liking.

Their first five summers there, Herring grew vegetables in an existing patch, just enough for the three of them and their loved ones. Well, and the neighbourhood deer. She eventually became so frustrated with her hoofed callers that in the spring of 2025 she pivoted to flowers, primarily cosmos, which deer tend to avoid owing to their bitter taste and strong scent. (Herring planted her flower garden on May 25 of that year, the day her mother Susan died. She says her mother was forever coaching her on what to grow and that tending to the young plants helped her tremendously during that difficult period.)

Within a few months, Herring had such an overabundance of blossoms that she began advertising on Facebook Marketplace, inviting parties to arrive at their site to handpick bouquets for a nominal fee — the same way one would drive out of town to gather farm-grown strawberries or raspberries.

Around this time last year, Herring came across several online articles about mobile flower trucks and vans that would pull up to street fairs and the like in cities south of the border, to sell arrangements to passers-by. She discussed the concept with Gerry, telling him it would probably be easier than scheduling u-pick visits to their place around their respective careers. His response: why not do that very thing with a Chevy truck he’d owned since he was a teenager that was rusting out on his dad’s land?

“When I tell you this truck was a shell of what you see today, I’m not kidding,” Herring states, running a hand over its hood. “It’s basically four vehicles in one: a ’58 Apache with a Camaro front clip, along with a (General Motors) Vortec 5.3-litre engine married to a (GM) 4L60E transmission. He basically rebuilt it from the ground up and even added a frame over the flatbed, for a canvas canopy that shields the flowers from the weather.”

And because their son is obsessed with skeletons, she adopted that as her logo, she says, drawing attention to a bony caricature on the truck’s driver-side door.

Herring debuted the Apache in early July, at Third & Bird’s Slice of Summer market. She says she and her husband’s cousin Sidney, who often helps her out, received more than their fair share of thumbs-ups from fellow motorists as they drove along Pembina Highway on their way to the sale. The reception that afternoon and evening was overwhelmingly positive and directly led to opportunities at other events later in the month, including the Wolseley Farmers Market and the Linden Woods Community Centre Market.

“As the summer went along and I was doing better than expected, I started applying to more and more (markets),” says Herring, who will happily put together a bouquet if asked, but encourages customers to muster their own by selecting from different varieties of flowers, depending on what’s blooming in the garden, that week.

“Doing it themselves also gives them the option to make what they want, in a price range they’re comfortable with. They can even buy a single flower, if they so desire.”

Herring, who plans to continue doing markets well into October — she’s about to introduce homegrown pumpkins to the mix — is already thinking ahead to next year. She recently entered into an agreement with Red River Co-op to have pre-made arrangements available at one of its stores, with a goal of expanding to four or five outlets beginning next June. That and Gerry is currently eyeing his “veritable graveyard of cars and trucks,” as he tries to decide which ramshackle treasure he’ll resurrect next, in order to add a second set of wheels to the proceedings.

“He wants to do it and hey, I’m all for it,” Herring says, noting she has also been approached by multiple couples who are getting married, who’ve wanted her to park her ride outside their venue so guests can bring a flower or two with them, on their way inside.

In case you were wondering, Herring allows that “a ton” of people — mostly gearheads — have expressed an interest in purchasing the truck itself. And while she is familiar with the saying, “everything has a price,” she says in her case, that simply isn’t true.

“I mean, if I was ever to sell it, I wouldn’t have much of a business, now would I?” she chuckles.

For a list of where to find River’s Garden Co. next, go to riversgardenco.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca