Rock Garden Farms hosts Tropical Oasis Market to help jumpstart businesses coming out of the pandemic

By Rob Paul

Rock Garden Farms is one of the most popular spots in the Caledon region, a family run country market that offers everything from dazzling flowers to fresh produce and baked good.

On Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4, the open green space was transformed into even more as it hosted a community market.

The Tropical Oasis Market could be the start of a new tradition on Airport Road in Caledon East.

It was the collaboration effort of two different GTA markets that focus on promoting shopping local. The Prestige Market—run by Melissa Spina—and the Mini Regal Market—run by Ursula Romeo, teamed up to bring a plethora of vendors selling all kinds of products to the area.

It was almost like a festival celebrating the return of normalcy for businesses with the colourful balloons and the DJ playing tunes throughout the weekend.

The idea has been months in the making, but as with everything these days, the pandemic made it difficult to get the ball rolling. Luckily, with the summer weather and the loosened restrictions, the market was finally able to come together.

All that was needed was a spacious outdoor venue and when they saw Rock Garden Farms, they knew that had to be the location.

Thanks to Margaret Galati, head of operations at Rock Garden Farms, they were able to secure the venue and kick off the summer with the market.

Romeo and Spina said they were happy they could get the market to takeoff in Caledon because they want to do their part in helping local small business owners bounce back after 15 months of hardships due to the pandemic.

“We've been doing our own market stuff for a few years, and this is the first one we did a collaboration on,” said Romeo. “We've been trying to do it since pre-COVID, and then everything happened with COVID. We had an indoor venue planned and we couldn't do it because of COVID, so, we started to look for farms.

“That's when Mel reached out to Margaret from Rock Garden Farms, and she was really accommodating and amazing. She's been very supportive of local vendors because these local vendors haven't really been able to sell anything with everything that's been going on. She wanted to give them a space where they can showcase their stuff and come together as a community.”

Spina's market was actually born out of how she saw the pandemic hurting businesses and that's when she reached out to Romeo, a veteran of the market community, to help get hers churning. That's when the pair realized teaming up would offer a perfect way to help businesses hit the ground running and get their names out there to different communities. 

“So Urs has Mini Regal Market—she's had it for a few years,” Spina said. “I started Prestige Market in November because I was trying to start my own small business in the summertime when COVID hit. Of course, I couldn't get it up off the floor and I was thinking that there's got to be a way to help small businesses out there in the community. 

“I thought there has got to be a hub of some kind to join everyone together and have a system of support where we can have events and people can learn about these small businesses and essentially help them to thrive. That's when I started Prestige and when I started Prestige, I reached out to Urs because I was a new market—it wasn't even supposed to be a market, it was more of a community hub for people. And so we've been trying to plan a market ever since.”

The negative impact COVID has had on so many businesses in the GTA really lit a fire under the duo to try their best to help make a tangible change as the province slowly starts to come out of the pandemic and reopen.

“We saw friends of ours who have businesses and saw how destructive COVID has been,” Spina said. “We knew we needed to do something to hook them back into the community, remind people of them again, to promote shopping local, and help to rebuild the local economy. We started planning and of course with all of the restrictions we couldn't do an indoor venue and we decided we needed a farm somewhere in the GTA community that's local for everybody. 

“That's when we went to searching and I found Rock Garden Farms. It's so gorgeous and I sent it to Urs saying, ‘We've got to call them.' We were lucky enough to speak to Margaret and she's been amazing from day one. We told her how we want to help small businesses and promote them to help them get back into the community and raise awareness in the community.”

Although the market is in Caledon, it attracted vendors from all over Ontario who saw an opportunity to bring their products to new areas and consumers to help grow their businesses.

“This isn't even just Caledon or the Peel Region, it's all around,” Spina said. “We have vendors from Niagara Falls here, Wasaga Beach, Barrie, Scarborough, Vaughan, we have people from everywhere. We tell them too that this is a great way to promote your business to other regions and areas.”

Social media is essential in today's business world and Spina and Romeo's reach on Instagram is how they helped spread the word of the event.

A bonus from the event is the popularity of Rock Garden Farms, says the pair. The strawberry picking at the farm has been bringing in more people to their market, which in turn led to a highly successful first day.

“We've had a ton of traffic,” said Spina. “On the first day especially, the flow of traffic was really great. Margaret's traffic has been bringing more to our event and we've also been promoting the heck out of it on our Instagrams. So, we've had our Instagrammers come here and we tell them that they can also strawberry pick here and can grocery shop local. Most people are coming out because they really want to support local and help small businesses thrive and grow and connect with the community—that's what it's all about, we're so happy about it.”

The Prestige Market and Mini Regal Market will be teaming up again in Caledon at Rock Garden Farms to host a Pumpkin Kisses & Harvest Wishes outdoor in-person fall market.

“We're back here in September thanks to Margaret and we're really excited,” said Spina.

The fall market will run September 25 and 26 (backup dates are October 2 and 3). For more information on the markets return to Rock Garden Farms and other market dates, follow @the.prestige.market and @miniregalmarket on Instagram.