PEOPLE, PLACES & PLANTS

Martha McKee retires from TBG Garden Shop

MARTHA MCKEE, Buyer and Visual Merchandiser for the TBG’s Garden Shop, is retiring after almost a decade.

If you’ve admired the look of the shop or the TBG booth at Canada Blooms over the past few years then you are familiar with Martha’s display skills…the beautifully set out chinaware, colourful flowing scarves, horticulturally-themed books and puzzles, plant pots and so many other garden accessories.

Martha started in the shop as a volunteer. After 30 years as Vice President, Media and Communications for Waterford Wedgwood Canada— where she set up displays for more than 50 trade shows—she took a course in horticultural design at George Brown College where she met Sue Hills who would become TBG Volunteer Coordinator and others who encouraged her to sign up as a TBG volunteer.

When former Director of Horticulture Paul Zammit was looking for a volunteer to help set up the booth at Canada Blooms, Martha stepped up. At the end of the show, she had put in so many hours and so much effort that “I told Paul there was no way this was a volunteer job,” she recalls. “So, I began doing it on a contract basis.”

About five or six years ago she also became “temporary” stock buyer and continued to share running the shop with Joanna Joyet. One of the joys of the job, says Martha, was learning so much from Paul Zammit, whom she describes as “a font of horticultural knowledge.”

When COVID-19 shut down Toronto in March 2020, “we were just finished setting up the booth at Canada Blooms. I was saying that I couldn’t believe we were actually ready ahead of time when they told us the show was closing, before it had even opened.”

The pandemic actually gave Martha a lot of time off and she discovered, “I had lots to do.” She and her husband Andrew Borkowski, a writer and teacher at George Brown College, were both reaching retirement age, their last child was leaving home and they began to reflect on how life can change very suddenly. They had been talking about moving to their family cottage in Thornbury, on Georgian Bay, and decided “the time is right.”

Their Toronto house is going up for sale in April but they won’t be moving until after May 24 “as I have to move my plants. We’re starting a new garden and I’m taking my grandparents’ peonies with me. They were in my grandparents’ garden, then my parents’ and now mine.”

Gardening is in Martha’s blood. Her grandfather won prizes at the 1929 Canadian National Exhibition for his peonies and delphiniums.

Martha’s favourite TBG event was the annual spring plant sale. She says she will miss walking around the gardens and the people. “I worked with a lot of wonderful volunteers in the shop.”

She and Andrew will be splitting their time between Thornbury and “somewhere more urban.” You never know, she says. She could end up volunteering back at the TBG sometime in the future.

So, it’s not so much “goodbye, Martha”, as “see you later.” —Lorraine Hunter

Martha flanked by two volunteers in the TBG Garden Shop.