Courses
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Landscape Ontario's Garden Centre Sector Group is thrilled to announce a series of FREE online training specific to the needs of independent garden centres and targeted to new garden centre staff.
NEW Online Training Portal
Miss a webinar? Have a scheduling conflict? No problem.
With our new easy-to-use online training portal enjoy flexible access to your online training. Now you can access past webinars and connect to training resources whenever you need them. Available exclusively to registered participants.
Introductory Horticultural Training Series
Featuring Live Webinars:
April 2,4,9,10,16,18,24,25
In this Series
Each 1 hour webinar features content specific to the needs of independent garden centres and targeted to new garden centre staff.
Training is a crucial aspect for garden centres in Ontario, as they go from being very quiet to extremely busy within a few weeks. But with so much on an owner's plate in a short period of time — hiring, receiving products, and forecasting business — training is often done on the fly, leading to a sink-or-swim scenario.
Aligning your new and returning staff with essential product knowledge, work environment expectations and best practices will not only improve the overall shopping experience for your customers as well as help with employee development.
Don’t miss out on a fantastic resource for your staff!
MEET YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Art Vanden Enden
Art Vanden Enden loved every minute of his 44-year garden centre career with Weall and Cullen and Sheridan Nurseries. In retirement, Art enjoys giving back to the profession with Landscape Ontario’s Garden Centre Sector Group and sharing his experience with Landscape Trades readers in the Art of Gardening column.
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Art has worked at two of the largest and most prominent garden centres in Canada for 44 years. He started with Weall and Cullen Nurseries in 1978 and quickly realized that this was a job that he wanted to make into a career. During his years at Weall and Cullen, Art gained experience in many sectors of the business from working as a landscape designer, nursery worker, and annual plant worker, and all other seasonal departments.
Art eventually worked his way up to managing his own store. After eight years as a store manager, Art was promoted into a new position as Retail Operations Manager, which essentially saw him oversee store operations at all six Weall and Cullen stores. In 2002, Sheridan Nurseries purchased Weall and Cullen. With this change, Art retained his responsibilities overseeing the stores and after a few years, took charge of all of the Sheridan Nurseries stores as Garden Centre Operations Manager, and then on to Vice President of Retail Operations for Sheridan Nurseries.
During his time in various roles, Art was always an avid home gardener, and took a special interest working as a night school instructor in horticulture. Art became aware of Communities in Blooms in the 1990’s and saw synergies and opportunities to work with the group and he volunteered as a judge in the residential program in Oshawa, Ontario. Art has had opportunities to visit many of the best garden centres in North America on a regular basis as well as in the UK.
In 2022, Art retired from Sheridan Nurseries and after a short period of time, started getting involved more heavily with Landscape Ontario as a Board member on their provincial board of directors as well as a technical instructor in the Grow Program. Art also believes that home gardening is at a critical point as garden industries need to be more responsible with continually improving and protecting biodiversity.
Read the latest from Art Vanden Enden
Building Your Team
Art Vanden Enden | March 2024
Never Stop Growing
Art Vanden Enden | March 2023
I Loved my Garden Centre Career
Art Vanden Enden | October 2022
In this module, we will introduce you to botany and horticulture. We will cover plant life cycles, classifications, common and botanical names, plant parts, plant hardiness, and more.