Shelmerdine still blooming after 80 years

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This article was published 17/04/2017 (3322 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For anyone who loves browsing among flowering plants, garden décor, women’s fashions, and stopping to enjoy coffee and a snack, Shelmerdine Garden Centre at 7800 Roblin Blvd. in Headingley is an ideal spot.

This year marks the business’ 80th year and the three owners Burghard (Bo) Wohlers, his daughter Nicole Bent and Chad Labbe are planning a quiet celebration.

“We celebrated our 75th in a big way,” Bent recalled.

None of the three current owners were around when Walter Shelmerdine started the business in 1937 at 3612 Roblin Blvd. in Charleswood. Walter concentrated on the production of fruit trees, mainly apple varieties, which were sold to farmers in Charleswood and west Winnipeg. In 1944 he began drawing up landscape plans for homeowners in the winter months. Shelmerdine Nursery produced its first plant catalog in 1953, advertising home landscape plans for $5, and trees and shrubs ranging from 50 cents to $2. Shelmerdine retired from the company in 1967.
After emigrating from Germany in 1972, Wohlers, who is a trained landscape engineer, joined the four partners who then owned the company in 1973. The business operated in a renovated house on three acres, mainly selling trees and shrubs that were grown on 50 acres farther west in Headingley on what is now the business’ current site.

“We operated year-round and were also in concrete production,” Wohlers said. The partners used moulds to create concrete fountains, bird baths and lawn ornaments.

“We realized that we outgrew the site in Charleswood,” he said. The business relocated to 7800 Roblin Blvd. in 1974, and in 1976 the first greenhouse was built. There are now 23, covering about three acres.

Wohlers and his partners decided to sell bedding plants one spring, and the success of this venture prompted them to keep building greenhouses to cultivate more plants.

“We became known as a major supplier in spring flowers and perennials,” he said, with customers driving out from St. James, Charleswood and Tuxedo.

They moved their tree nursery to 200 acres in the RM of St. Francois Xavier. Wohlers said the 2011 flood along the Assiniboine River completely destroyed their tree nursery stock and it hasn’t been replanted.

The company also operated a 1,000-acre sod farm near Stonewall until they sold it three years ago.

Another branch of the business, run as Shelmerdine Ltd., offers landscaping design and installation. Wohlers said the focus has moved over the past 40 years, from residential to commercial customers, naming Gimli’s Viking Park as a current work site.

Wohlers is the sole remaining partner out of the five he first joined. He said he decided to keep the Shelmerdine name for business reasons.

“It was one of the best-known names in western Canada.”

Bent said she started working at Shelmerdine when she was very young. After earning an interior design degree at the University of Manitoba, she worked as a store designer for Winnipeg’s Palliser Furniture until 2005.

She said, at that time Shelmerdine Garden Centre was beginning to expand its scope and needed a designer. She later agreed to join her father as a partner, as she wanted to continue the family legacy and her father’s vision.

Labbe grew up in St. James, and upon his mother’s urging him to find a part-time job, he started work at Shelmerdine 27 years ago.

“I was watering, sweeping and loading carts. I hated it,” he recalled.

However, like Wohlers, he discovered a passion for nurturing plants. “I was very fortunate to find something that I loved doing at such an early age,” he said.

Labbe earned his landscape technician certificate at Red River College, with Shelmerdine sponsoring him as a journeyman. When the last of Wohlers’ original partners retired in 2010, Labbe was happy to have the opportunity to step into that role.

Shelmerdine still sells many annual and perennial flowers, trees and shrubs in the spring and summer, Christmas trees and poinsettias each December and seasonal flowers for Easter and Mother’s Day. However the business has evolved to include special events and workshops. A small café was added a few years ago.

“We definitely think of ourselves as a destination,” Labbe said. “People can come here and spend an afternoon.”

Bent said they are seeing multiple generations coming out to celebrate Halloween and Christmas with a visit to Shelmerdine’s special seasonal children’s areas.

A local farmer’s market will be set up in the Shelmerdine Garden Centre’s parking lot every Saturday in August this year.

For a full listing of events, see http://www.shelmerdine.com/events/

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