THE PRACTICAL GARDENER

FRENCH CANADIAN Dave Demers fell in love with the Northwest during an internship at Heronswood Nursery near Kingston. A talented horticulturist with a killer accent, Demers grew up on a farm outside Quebec City. But this young dynamo wasn't destined to stay on the farm, despite taking over the family vegetable plot and founding a garden club while still in his teens.

"Dave is a natural-born plantsman, self-motivated, with a well-honed sense of style," says Dan Hinkley, former owner of Heronswood. "When a lad is already producing his own line of containers in his early 20s, you suspect that he is on the path to professional success."

At age 32, Demers has a diploma in ornamental horticulture, and practical experience interning at New York's famous Stonecrop Gardens and Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa. He's hunted plants in Mongolia, China, Chile, Argentina, India and Bhutan. He lectures, writes and appears on television. And now he's working with an artist friend to create high-end outdoor furniture to add to his line of modernist containers so sculptural you don't even need to plant them. These entrepreneurial pursuits take Demers to design shows around the world.

Though Demers had worked on four continents before age 30, he was so drawn to the deep green of Heronswood that he was determined to stay and work on our coast. Six years ago he moved to Vancouver, B.C., a city he describes as "dense, intimate in scale and excessively green." When he arrived, he knew not a soul, but within a year Demers founded Cyan Horticulture. The firm's projects range from roof gardens to mixed borders and open-air retail spaces.

"I never forget about plants and try to bring them into a project early on," says Demers. His approach to city planting focuses on site specifics. Hence, "I never do the same thing twice."

Coming from a harsher East Coast climate, Demers appreciates working in the mild climate of Vancouver. "It's pretty sweet for a city environment," he says. Yet urban gardens, especially condo projects, offer a unique set of challenges. Buildings cast shade, rooflines prevent rain from reaching the plants, trees can block views, and many elements need to be juggled for success, which is why Demers appreciates being involved in projects early on. "When called in early, we can bring design ideas outdoors," he says, which could be as simple as running pipes under pavers or as vital to a project's success as designing exterior spaces to be viewed from inside.

Demers recently completed two balconies and a rooftop garden for a short-rise condo he calls "very Vancouver." He used mostly evergreens in custom metal planters for a sleek, year-round look. The plant palette includes copper beeches, black mondo grass, weeping Arctic willows, boxwood balls, strawberry trees, yew hedging and Beesia 'Deltoides' with evergreen, heart-shaped leaves, all growing in planters.

"Plants give back the most bang for the buck in small spaces," he says. That's why he prefers the work to designing bigger properties where an entire truckload of plants disappears into the landscape. "You can go full-on in small spaces because there's less of everything," says Demers. It's unusual for someone so thoroughly steeped in horticulture to also display such a talent for design, construction and the trials of getting projects completed. Demers, with his anti-recipe approach, seems to be eating up the challenge of greening Vancouver one rooftop, container and garden at a time. And will this dazzling young designer stay put in Vancouver?

"I love this climate and this coast," he says. "My brain doesn't work without all this green."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.