Owen Reeves making his first appearance at Quinte Home and Lifestyle Show

Owen Reeves, outdoor and gardening expert, is coming to speak at the Quinte Home and Lifestyle Show for the first time. Photo by theoutsideelement.ca

By Olivia Timm 

BELLEVILLE – The well-known outdoor and gardening expert, Owen Reeves, will be educating people on growing their own food with a visit to the Quinte Home and Lifestyle show this weekend.

“One hundred years ago, everybody grew their own food because they had to. We went away from that, but now we’re really getting back to it, which I think is great for people because it’s really important in a lot of different ways,” said Reeves.

Reeves’ presentation is one of the show’s highlights this year, and will take place Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m.

Reeves has been featured on the popular daytime television show, The Marilyn Denis Show, and takes pride in giving presentations and consultations to a broad audience.

As a newcomer to the show, he says he is excited to share his expertise with the Quinte region.

“It’s my first time they reached out to have me come down. I’m really looking forward to it, I really enjoy visiting the Quinte region, I love Prince Edward County. I think it’s one of the many parts of Ontario that’s seeing a lot of growth right now which is really cool.”

Reeves’ presentation will give the audience some useful steps and tips for growing edibles in containers, which he says has become very popular. For folks who want to do organic gardening, he has some information about how that hobby can be easier.

“What I’m gonna be talking about in the upcoming show is focused on edibles, and growing your own food. That’s been really fun, and really neat to see the interest in that come back.”

Since he was young, Reeves has had a passion for gardening; he grew up around plants, and it led to a passion for nature and the outdoors.

“I got into the industry through a family business, actually. My family owned a garden centre for many decades, and so I grew up there and spent a lot of time there from the time that I was 12. I picked up a lot of knowledge along the way.”

Reeves’ inspiration for starting his own company, The Outside Element, is to help educate people and expand their knowledge of gardening so that their space is unique. He began the company formally, three years ago.

“A big part of what I enjoy is the creativity of it and I enjoy doing design and taking something that is less than beautiful and being able to turn it into something beautiful…What I try to do and where people end up bringing me on board is to approach the non-expert gardener, and help people go from having very little knowledge to maybe a working knowledge on how gardening works and how to use their outdoor spaces and care for plants.”

“I pretty much wanted to be able to bring what I do in all aspects of my business into one thing. We do landscaping, and I focus primarily on the horticultural side of landscaping. By that I mean the plant-focused side. We do design work and a lot of the things I end up getting involved with are often about taking tired gardens or properties that have not seen a lot of love in years and then revamping them.”

Reeves encourages people to come and talk to him about any questions they might have. There are also some free soil give-aways that Reeves is giving out to the audience.

The show is an exhibition of renovation and design companies within the Quinte region and beyond. There will be experts in fields such as kitchen design, gardening, cooking, renovating and property investing, to name a few.

The Quinte Home and Lifestyle show will be running from Friday to Sunday.