Hunters Garden Centre: Sustainability staples

It’s just always been a part of who Hunters is. 

“There's always been efforts to minimize,” says Miles Hunter, the general manager and third-generation owner of the British Columbia IGC. “Whether it's something that you realize there's a cost saving factor or whether it's something that you realize is just in the best interest of the environment, we've always recycled, reused, reduced as much as we can for everything.” 

Recent sustainability efforts at Hunters — #95 on the 2024 Top 100 Independent Garden Centers List — include installing solar panels to offset electricity usage and replacing an older furnace with a high-efficiency model. The IGC also recycles all its plastic — over 4,400 pounds last year. 

A history of Hunters 

Hunters Garden Centre was founded in 1953 by David and Margaret Hunter as The Kingsway Garden Shop. The company expanded in 1960 when David took over the operation of The Broadway Garden Shop. With two garden centers, the name was changed to David Hunter Garden Shops, then David Hunter Landscape Nurseries. 

Eventually reaching four locations, the business was then renamed David Hunter Garden Centers. (Three of the locations closed in 1978, 1995 and 2009, respectively.) 

Today, Hunters has two locations, one in Surrey and one in Vancouver. (The company found a new location in Vancouver and reopened a second store in 2012.) The IGC employs 30 to 35 employees at its annual peak and 15 to 20 during the slow period. 

Along with the traditional IGC departments — annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs, edibles, fertilizers, pots, soils, tools and seasonal items — the Surrey store has a flower shop and bulk soils.

David and Margaret retired to British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast in 1978. Margaret passed in 2008, and David — who was instrumental in founding the British Columbia Nursery Trades Association (now the British Columbia Landscape and Nursery Association) — passed in 2014. 

David’s son, Ron, and his wife, Deni, took over the business from David and Margaret. 

Ron and Deni’s son, Miles, officially started working at the family business at age 12, planting and watering bedding plants in the greenhouse at the Surrey store. At 14, he started working as a cashier. He started working in management around 2003. 

Over the years, Miles undertook initiatives including developing the business’ first website, starting email marketing campaigns and implementing a point-of-sale system.  

Miles took over the position of general manager from his father Ron in 2010 and officially took over as owner in 2015. 

Sustainability at Hunters 

Miles said he’d been thinking about solar panels for years, since the 2-acre Surrey location has excellent south-facing exposure and gets full sun all summer. 

Using a company that Hunters had already worked with for roofing, Penfolds Roofing & Solar installed 46 panels on the roof of the Surrey location this year. 

The system will offset 80 to 90% of the IGC’s electrical usage — both an attractive cost savings and a benefit to the environment. Plus, any extra power the IGC generates is sent back into the grid, with the business receiving a credit from its power company. 

Miles is able to use an app on his phone, mySolarEdge, to check the status of the array to ensure everything’s working properly, as well as the individual output for each panel. 

For other IGCs interested in solar, Miles cautioned that it will likely take longer than expected due to “municipal red tape,” including the permitting process. 

Also at the Surrey location, a 1970s-era furnace — likely only about 60 to 70% efficient — was replaced with a high-efficiency natural gas model last year. He encourages other green businesses in need of an upgrade to explore rebates, which Hunter utilized. 

The IGC is also planning to replace the inefficient furnaces in its greenhouse. 

Hunters also recycles all its plastic using a company called Emterra Group. In the past, the IGC would both reuse its plastic and accept plastic from customers to be recycled but stopped due to the risk of spreading diseases and pests. 

Hunters has been working with Emterra, which sells the plastic to companies to be made into recycled materials, for about 10 years.

Katharine Valentino, manager at the Surrey location, said one of the primary focuses at Hunters is making sure “waste gets in the proper place.” 

“We are still an industry that does heavily rely on plastic, and if we can kind of mitigate that and make sure waste gets to the proper place, I think that's really important,” she says.  

Plus, the IGC being sustainable sets a good example for the customers, whom Hunters also wants to engage in sustainable practices. 

“Gardening and being self-sustainable in your own home garden kind of should be the goal for every gardener,” Valentino says. “And as we sell great products, it should go hand-in-hand to do proper waste control and composting and things like that. 

“It really benefits everyone when the garden centers are eco-based. Then, they can educate their staff and their consumers on how to be eco-based,” she adds. “We should always be striving towards a more ‘greener’ practice. For selling plants, it should go hand-in-hand.” 

A second family 

Laura Doheny, the store manager for the Vancouver location, has worked at Hunters for more than 25 years. 

She started out as a volunteer when her children were young, then Ron Hunter hired her for a part-time job. She eventually transitioned to full-time and moved up the ranks, from supervisor to assistant manager and now manager. 

“The Hunter family has been an incredibly fantastic family to work for,” Doheny says. “Our store is a neighborhood store. Like, I live five blocks from the store, so the people that come here are my friends, are my neighbors. The kids that we hire are kids that went to school with my kids.” 

Making the Top 100 list took a lot of hard work, she said. The Vancouver store is 6,000 square feet in the middle of a city, and it shares a parking lot with a large restaurant, so there’s no holding or receiving area. Orders are unloaded, priced and on the floor the same day they arrive.

But all the hard work is worth it because of the Hunters team that she calls her “second family,” in a community where three generations of families have come to shop at the local IGC. 

“We're a real community base here,” she says. “We've been in this neighborhood for over 50 years, and so it's really been nice to see everybody kind of grow up...That's a really, really big part of who we are is family.” 

Valentino started working at Hunters in 2021 after immigrating to Canada from Washington state in the U.S., where she had previously worked at a nursery. 

“It's definitely a family-oriented business, and that's something that's really important to me,” she says. “Being around people who are willing to share their garden knowledge with me is really wonderful, and then our community is so nice.” 

Advice for other IGCs 

Miles’ advice for other IGCs includes staying fresh and having something new each season, as well as being flexible in what you think your community wants and listening to customer feedback. 

“It’s like half a guessing game, what you think they'll buy, and half referencing our numbers from previous years,” he says. “So just trying to stay ahead of the curve and really listen to what the customers are looking for.” 

Ask him how Hunters made it to the Top 100 list, and he says it’s all about “small, incremental improvements over a long period of time.” 

“I might have 20 or 30 things on my to-do list, and I'm never going to get them all done in a day,” he says. “If you can get one or two things crossed off that list every day and hopefully cross off more items that get added to the list, then that's how you slowly improve.” 

And many of those to-do list items are tied to Hunters’ sustainability efforts. 

The business highlights its sustainable practices on its website, including sustainable energy usage, sustainable water usage (with a sprinkler system that runs on a nightly timer), sustainable plastic disposal, sustainable organic waste disposal (using a company called Green For Life) and carrying products from local suppliers. 

The website also features the “Climate Corner,” with information on water conservation, enhancing biodiversity in the garden and wildlife prevention.

Customers aren’t necessarily overly excited about Hunters’ sustainability efforts — the most common reaction is “a quiet nod,” Miles says — but that doesn’t mean it’s not still hugely important for IGCs to focus on sustainability. It’s just expected. 

In fact, it should be the exception to the rule that businesses are not engaging in sustainability. 

For IGCs interested in upping their sustainability efforts, Miles recommends plastic recycling as a top focus area by either reducing the amount of plastic used or recycling what can’t be reduced or reused. 

“In our industry, we're in the business of trying to make the world a more beautiful place with plants, and properly disposing our waste and recycling our products is a big part of that,” he says. “We don't want to see garbage all over the place. We want to see a clean world. We want a healthy world. We want healthy people, and that's an important part of It. We enjoy the beauty of nature, and that's where we should be able to focus on is making sure that nature is beautiful.”