June 6, 2025
Levelling up Windsor
Liana Desmarais
Landscape Ontario Windsor Chapter president Liana Desmarais is on a mission to bring more opportunities to southwestern Ontario. As the owner of Plantscape, a full-service landscape design, build and maintenance company in Windsor, Ont., Desmarais feels it’s time to give back to the association that helped her settle into a new industry.
Back in 2016, Desmarais’ father, Victor, passed down the family business without any warning. With an established 12-year career in finance and limited knowledge of landscaping, she quickly took advantage of the many learning opportunities at Congress to supplement her business savvy with landscaping knowledge.
The desire to bring these opportunities to others motivated Desmarais to join the Windsor Chapter Board. “I thought to myself, ‘You know, for all the courses I’ve taken and everything I’ve gotten out of LO, maybe I should give back,’” she explained.
Desmarais took over as chapter president in 2021. Her first order of business was increasing the board’s membership. “It’s honestly just pounding pavement and making phone calls,” she said of the process. “Every time I find myself on the phone with another landscaper and I can steal five minutes of their time, [I] talk about LO and becoming more involved, the benefits of it and working together.”
Now, seven professionals sit on the Windsor Chapter Board. Desmarais enjoys sharing knowledge, ideas and camaraderie with her fellow board members. She believes each landscaping company in Windsor is unique — no one’s a competitor.
“Plantscape is not the landscaper for every client, but there is a landscaper out there in Windsor for every client,” she said. When a client requests a job she can’t do, she picks up the phone and dials a fellow member company. “That’s the kind of industry I want to work in,” she said.
In addition to her role on the Windsor board, Desmarais is the chapter's representative to the provincial board of directors and sits on several of the association's committees. Above all, her favourite thing about being so involved with Landscape Ontario is the sense of community.
“I have friends now across the province that I have their personal cell numbers for, and if I’m struggling on a job, or I’m struggling with hiring somebody, or whatever it might be, I can reach out to anybody,” Desmarais explained. “They’re sounding boards for me, voices of reason, and I very much appreciate that. That to me is invaluable.”
Desmarais also spoke to the benefits of sharing training costs, like WHMIS, between companies. It’s cheaper for multiple organizations to run one session for all their employees — plus, you don’t have to worry about losing a staff member you just invested in training, because there are more qualified people out there to hire.
“You’re improving the entire industry instead of just your own company,” Desmarais said. “So when I’m hiring somebody, if they did work for a another landscaping company, they may have participated in the training my staff have already been through! If you think about it as a whole, it’s just better for everybody.”
Upskilling is very important to Desmarais, who believes properly trained professionals are happier and do better work. She’s participated in LO’s GROW Employers of Choice program and encourages participation amongst her team. In addition to increasing Windsor’s board membership, she wants to bring more awareness to GROW and apprenticeship in southwestern Ontario.
She worked with the LO GROW staff to run a GROW Training for New Workers session out of the Unemployed Help Centre (UHC) of Windsor’s facility in fall 2024. The program trained 12 participants, two of which Plantscape later hired.
Desmarais’s biggest goal for the Windsor Chapter is to have its own training facility in southwestern Ontario to run programs like GROW. She’s in the final stages of site planning, but hasn’t broken ground yet — that’s on her 2025 to-do list.
“It’s such a great program to be able to work and learn at the same time,” she said. “The GROW program is such a phenomenal program that’s available to all employers, and it’s free. Why more people don’t take advantage of it is a mystery to me.”
It’s been a challenge increasing engagement so far from the GTA, but the Windsor community is coming together. The chapter recently sponsored one of its first events back in February: a one-day horticulture symposium run by a local club in Wheatley, Ont.
Desmarais recalled advice from former LO executive director Tony DiGiovanni: “It’s all cycles, Liana. And you’re on the upswing in Windsor. Just keep at it. Don’t lose faith. It’s going to come together.”