My friend David Leeman is an adventurous gardener whose experiences span a widely divergent range of growing conditions. During Toronto’s growing season he works non-stop as a professional gardener, tending to and restoring gardens for clients. When not working on other people’s gardens, David experiments in growing trees seedlings and has been growing his own vegetable plot at the Leslie Spit Allotments for 14 years! Before the winter chill sets in David packs his bags and heads to warmer climates to take advantage of a second growing season elsewhere. For the past 8 years he’s found himself returning to locations in Barbados and St. Lucia where he has worked on client gardens, run an organic farm, and helped to restore a damaged botanical garden.

In this episode, David and I chat about his work as a professional gardener here in Toronto and delve into some of the exciting experiences (chocolate, vanilla, nutmeg!) and challenges he has faced gardening in the Caribbean.

Episode #10: David Leeman | Professional Gardener / Gardening in the Caribbean

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About My Guest

David Leeman is a professional gardener who splits his time between Toronto, Canada and warmer winter destinations. His mantra is, “The right plant in the right place.”

David managed, Emerald House, an organic farm in St. Lucia that supplies food to a very hoity-toity eco resort.

A beautiful planting of yellow and orange cosmos that David planted along an old wall at the Emerald House farm in St. Lucia.

Giant Granadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis) fruit that David grew from seed. When we went to visit him in St. Lucia he greeted us with this fruit. It is like a melon and passionfruit rolled into one.

Cacao beans are laid out to dry on a rack inside this building. The rack is pulled out onto the tracks when it is sunny and quickly pushed back inside when it rains.

A little known delicacy: the thin layer of sweet and citrusy flesh from around a freshly plucked coffee bean.

Vanilla plants (an orchid) growing up the trunk of a cacao tree. Emerald House was a former chocolate plantation. A small orchard of trees still thrive on the land. During his time there, David grew vanilla pods and managed to reach the temperatures required to cause fermentation by keeping the pods in the cabin of his truck!

David preparing the day’s harvest of organically grown edibles and cut flowers to be delivered to the resort. The flowers he is bundling are the infamous torch ginger that I had helped to harvest during my stay on the farm. It was a very memorable experience!

A gorgeous trough of species begonias growing in David’s current home garden. [Photo provided by David Leeman]

Further Resources

• I have been the beneficiary of a few of David’s seed-grown Japanese Maples.
• Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens, Soufreire, St. Lucia.
• A few of David’s photos showing devastation to the garden post Hurricane Tomas and later on Christmas Day when a torrential rain washed away new plantings.
• A photo of the Giant Granadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis) flower that I took in St. Lucia.
• An account of my experiences tasting fresh cacao in Dominica and St. Lucia.
• My experience eating Golden Apple for the first time in Barbados.
• Hunte’s Gardens in Barbados