Flowers at Blondies Gift and Garden Centre ( Tiffany Goodwein/CHATNewsToday)

By Tiffany Goodwein

Building an outdoor oasis: More Hatters take up gardening as pandemic carries on

May 3, 2021 | 7:00 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB- As the shovels scoop the dirt, Lindy Doyle is one step closer to creating that little piece of outdoor paradise.

Doyle is the current president of the Medicine Hat & District Horticultural Association and has been gardening for close to two decades.

“It’s relaxing, you know people say it is so much work but it is not work if you like doing it,” she said.

According to a report from Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, just over half (51 per cent) now grow at least one type of fruit or vegetable and of those, nearly one in five (17.4 per cent) started growing their own food for the first time during COVID-19.

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The plant craze is evident at Blondies Gift and Garden Centre. The greenhouse has been non-stop busy since February.

“It’s twice as busy as it was last year and last year was twice as busy as the year before. So everyone wants to plant everyone wants to be in the yard, and everyone wants to do ponds and garden beds and boxes,” said Joyce Swaren, owner of Blondies Gift and Garden Centre.

Trees and shrubs are all the rage right now, next to planting annuals. Fruits and vegetables are also popular right now in part because of the rising cost of food.

“The strawberries, the raspberries, the rhubarb and things like that, those went really early. We were selling those in March,” she said.

With more people testing out their green thumb, supply chain issues are impacting the greenhouse business with not enough supply coupled with trucking delays. That has resulted in simple items like tomato cages and insecticidal soap becoming tough to find.

“My supply worries me a little bit but I guess I have to be patient because I get little drags of it at a time and some things aren’t coming at all yet. Some things you have to wait until August. But I feel it is an issue with everyone. If they don’t have it we don’t get it, it’s not coming on time,” she said.

The lack of supply will in turn affect prices. This year, gardeners will have to shovel out more cash, as the issue continues to rock the greenhouse industry.

“I feel like every single thing has gone up and plants have gone out of this world. But just in general everything has gone up, like the plastic trays and everything that we use that’s all gone up too,” Swaren said.

Doyle, on the other hand, is not deterred by the price increases. She told CHAT News that she will be making the trips to the garden centre regardless of the price increases.

“It’s so nice to go to the garden centre, and you know go around smell the roses, look at the flowers and feel like you can go outside and get working,” she said.

As a business owner, Swaren is trying to keep her prices as low as she possibly can for her customers, despite the rising costs. She’s working to source products wherever she can locally and throughout Canada to ensure there are enough products on their shelves.

But if customers aren’t able to find a particular plant right now, Swaren said there is some leeway. Some trees and shrubs can be planted later on in the season and don’t necessarily have to be planted right away.