Winnipeg garden centres cutting back on seasonal staff amidst slow demand

Winnipeg garden centres say the cold weather so far in May is having an impact on sales. Joseph Bernacki explains.

Inside Ron Paul Garden Centre, owner Ray DuBois waters dozens of bedding trays. By this time of year, however, many of the flowers would already be off the shelf, but Mother Nature didn’t cooperate this year for a strong sales start.

“In my 17 years, I don’t recall seeing a weird late start like this. It would be warm but rainy, but at least warm. I don’t recall seeing just this cold and unpleasantness,” DuBois said on Tuesday.

DuBois said demand simply has not taken off. While customers have been trickling in - the plants are staying put. In turn, it’s caused him to cut back on hours for seasonal staff.

“Now we’ve been bringing them back on cause they’re students, they need to pay rent, and we are though running out of things to clean, so it’s been a little tough.”

Dubois said his garden centre received a record number of applications this season. He’s not the only one hoping to bring in more staff.

By Tuesday afternoon, the sun came out over Jardins St-Léon Gardens, but ownership said they have more staff than customers right now.

“It always is a challenging balancing act to know how busy this year is going to be,” said Colin Rémillard, co-owner of Jardins St-Léon Gardens.

“We can always adjust and we just know it’s going to get busy, it just hasn’t started yet.”

St Léons has been covering a majority of their plants overnight due to frost warnings. They’ve been adjusting on the fly.

“We’ve hired as many staff as we need compared to last year. We’ve just had to send some staff home here and there depending on if it’s freezing.”