Garden centre operators upset as COVID-19 restrictions remain during crucial sales period

The list included companies offering lawn care and landscaping services, which are “elated” and their employees’ “itching to get out,” Tony DiGiovanni, executive director of Landscape Ontario, said Sunday.

“We only have a short season to do the work,” said DiGiovanni, adding the sector has already lost about a month-and-a-half of work to the pandemic shutdown. Last, week he sent an e-blast to the organization’s 2,800 member companies urging them to ensure safety protocols are in place.

Garden centre operators, on the other hand, are less than elated that the premier, so far, has said that they can only provide pickup and delivery service, which many were already permitted to do.

Not allowing them to open their doors is potentially catastrophic for an industry that’s already on its heels due to the lockdown, said Mark Cullen, a gardening expert who heads Landscape Ontario’s retail task force.

“There are hundreds of Ontario growers and retailers whose businesses are at risk, there are thousands of jobs that are at risk, and there’s hundreds of millions of dollars worth of plant material that is going to get composted, because there’s no customer for it,” said Cullen on Sunday.

While everyone from hairstylists to massage therapists has a reason for thinking their industry should be opened up, what’s unique to the gardening industry is that we have “one month, the month of May, if we miss the month of May, you just watch the bankruptcies, you just watch the problems this is going to create in an industry that is dominated by family-run businesses.”

Many also decry as unfair the fact grocery stores and some big box retailers are allowed to open their garden centres to foot traffic, while garden centres are not.

“If you’re an independent garden centre operator,” you must keep closed, while across the street a grocery store can be “selling to beat the band,” Cullen said.

Andrew Morse, executive director of Flowers Canada Ontario, which represents about 180 Ontario producers of cut flowers, potted plants and hanging baskets, said every other province has allowed garden centres to open up, with strict protocols in place.

Monday “seems more like a close-down than an opening-up,” he told the Star on Sunday.

Most flower growers do upwards of 60 per cent of their sales between Easter and Mother’s Day, which is this coming Sunday. “Considering that Easter has already been a write off, if we’re unable to make sales for Mother’s Day the industry will see some fairly substantial pain.”

He likened it to telling a retailer told they couldn’t sell “for the two weeks leading up to Christmas and all the products that they would have sold they have to dispose of.”

Between March 13 and April 10, flower growers estimate they lost $52.5 million in sales. After Ford’s announcement, “I was getting calls ... from members crying, asking whether or not they can operate. They were hoping and expecting to get going and save their year, but that’s not going to be the case for some of them.”

Scott White, who owns a horticultural supply company, said Sunday independent garden centres that have been doing curbside sales say it doesn’t work, “because people like to walk through a garden centre and pick up what they want.”

In the United States, the solution has been to allow people through the back of a garden centre, and exit out the front, and allow a certain number of people to wander through the greenhouse. I’m not sure why (Premier) Ford didn’t do that.”

Retail garden centres that have opened curbside, and not allowed customers into their facilities, report business is down 70 per cent, Cullen said. Elsewhere in Canada, where retail garden centres have been allowed to open, under very strict protocols, businesses is up, in some cases very substantially.

This is not just about flowers — or commerce. It’s about giving self-isolated-weary Canadians the ability to garden outdoors, and be “engaged in a healthy activity that’s good for them mentally, physically and is good for us socially.”

To fight the spread of the coronavirus, Ontario has been in a state of emergency since March 17 with only essential businesses — such as supermarkets, pharmacies, liquor and beer stores, and takeout restaurants — allowed to open.

Also given the green light to reopen Monday were automatic and self-serve car washes and auto dealerships, open by appointment only. Golf courses and marinas may also begin to prepare to open for the warmer days ahead, but remain closed to the public. And additional construction projects.

At the same time, the government continues to urge people to stay home, practise physical distancing and go out for only essential reasons, to pick up groceries, prescriptions or to keep a medical appointment.