Dino is friendly & knowl­edge­able, sur­rounded by happy plants and the great rain bar­rels Fiesta sells.

The peo­ple at Fiesta Gardens would never think of tak­ing plants off a deliv­ery truck and then for­get­ting about them, or let­ting them bake in the sun to fend for them­selves. Plants in many retail spaces are lucky to get a splash of water now and then, but that’s not the case here. Here we have a plant enthu­si­ast, Margaret, who really cares about the plants she pro­vides. Between Margaret and Dino, the two plant spe­cial­ists here, plants are well sourced, well researched and well looked after till you get them in your hot lit­tle hands. (espe­cially hot these days!)

I caught Dino and Margaret at Fiesta Gardens on a blis­ter­ing hot day and they took time out from ush­er­ing out orders or clean­ing peren­ni­als to tell me a bit about themselves.

Margaret came to the gar­den world like many other gar­den­ers, from the world of art. I find it is often a nat­ural pro­gres­sion for many artists and writ­ers, to take rel­ish in nature, grow­ing things and cre­at­ing spaces of beauty. She has lec­tured at the Royal Ontario Museum and worked in pot­tery, and said it’s only nat­ural that she became inter­ested in plants, as the clay of pots comes “from the earth”. She’s also some­thing of a sci­en­tist and researcher, and con­stantly has botan­i­cal projects on the go at the store and at home, ever curi­ous to enlarge her knowl­edge of the plants she pro­vides. Growing up in a trop­i­cal coun­try no doubt primed her inter­est in grow­ing things, and she is cur­rently pas­sion­ate about the plants of Africa.

Horticultural edu­ca­tion is cru­cial to Margaret, she wants to know that the plants she sells are going to thrive when you get them home, and she’ll fill you in on any plant require­ments and how to look after the ones you buy.

Dino’s main pas­sion are the large nurs­ery items, the shrubs and trees, but he is par­tic­u­lar about the annu­als and veg­etable starts he sells too. He was spruc­ing up an order of mas­sive hang­ing annual planters when I spoke to him. To me they looked mag­nif­i­cent, he said, “They weren’t bad.” High stan­dards here.

Apart from the fact that the plants are well cared for and ready to thrive when you get them home, the selec­tion is fan­tas­tic too, with unusual spec­i­mens of veg­eta­bles, like black-eyed peas, callaloo, and scotch bon­net hot pep­pers, among oth­ers. The Hort Couture sec­tion is full of hard-to-find plant spec­i­mens like aga­pan­thus, cas­tor bean, and many other vari­eties new to me.

All this is avail­able right down­town, no need to drive out to the burbs to buy a tree. And when you buy that tree, or pot of annu­als, you know it’s had the best head start it could pos­si­bly have.