Bill Hardy and Renata Triveri are smiling, but in reality they picked one of the worst years to get into the garden centre business.
They bought Trice Farms, a four-acre nursery specializing mainly in ponds, fish and aquatic plants on the Dewdney Trunk Road in Maple Ridge, and this spring decided to turn it into a full-service garden centre with a new name, Gather and Grow.
It had always been Renata’s dream to own her own garden centre. When the opportunity came along, Bill jumped at the chance to make her dream come true.
The weather, on the other hand, was less than co-operative, producing a relentless stretch of cold, rainy, miserable days from March to June, putting a damper on the business and gardening in general.
Regardless, looking out from their garden gazebo at their nursery on to a beautiful pond stocked with giant koi, Bill and Renata are still smiling because the reason they bought the place was as much a lifestyle choice as it was a calculated business decision.
Renata had her dream, one she has nursed from her years as a teenager, and Bill had a dream, an idea that he could recapture the happy feelings he had as a kid growing up in Welland, Ont., when he raced off on his bike, straight after school to do gardening work for neighbours.
“When my teacher asked if there was anyone interested in doing it, I literally ran up to him and said, ‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it,� he recalls.
“I loved gardening then. I really loved it. I could have gone into landscaping. I had a scholarship to go to horticultural college, but I went a different route.�
The path he chose brought him to B.C. at 18 with his Grade 12 certificate still warm in his back pocket.
He started out as a gardener at the B.C. Penitentiary in New Westminster, taking care of the grounds — outside the prison.
From there, it has been a long and winding road along the highways and byways of B.C.’s garden industry for Hardy.
Few people buying packs of pansies and petunias from him at Gather and Grow probably realize the extent and depth of his involvement in B.C. horticulture and the knowledge and unique overview he has of the gardening scene.
Today, his regular, full-time job is as general manager at Northwest Landscape and Stone Supply in Burnaby – one of the top suppliers of natural landscape stone and a popular destination for gardeners looking for landscape materials.
This brings Hardy into contact with pretty much everybody in professional landscaping and garden design.
His years of involvement with the B.C. Landscape and Nursery Association, where he helped introduce a set of professional standards, has put him in touch with all the top growers and garden centre owners.
Now, as the co-owner of his own little garden centre, he is putting all those years of experience and knowledge to work for customers, who are not only looking for great plants, but tips on where to find reliable people to do quality garden work.
As for the challenge of running a successful garden centre, it’s nothing new to Hardy. He’s been doing it all his life.
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