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Teatro Verde
100 Yorkville Ave., Toronto
416-966-2227
www.teatroverde.com

This is the story of a little flower shop that has blossomed into one of Toronto's hottest destinations for home accessories and floral arrangements.

When Shawn Gibson and Michael Pellegrino opened Teatro Verde in 1997, it was a seedling of a store: 800 square feet inside Hazelton Lanes, the upscale shopping complex a few blocks north of Bloor Street West.

Last month, Teatro Verde settled into its grandest location to date, smack in the centre of Yorkville. The 9,000-square-foot space is a marriage of old and new, incorporating the stately Georgian façade of the original Mount Sinai Hospital while anchoring a swanky condo complex that also includes a new Diesel store at street level.

Translated as “green theatre,” Teatro Verde lives up to its name, capturing the shared interests of its owners: Pellegrino is the passionate landscape designer-cum-florist and Gibson, a gracious ham, formerly worked as an associate producer in Toronto and on Broadway.

Until now, however, they had lacked a stage that fully reflected their vision (a second location in the Bayview Village shopping centre is spacious but short on downtown cachet).

“Our mission is to tell a story of home and garden; we want to tell the storys and keep adding chapters,” Gibson says from the new store's Assouline Library room, only the third shop-within-a-shop dedicated to the publisher. “We had a really good business from a business point of view, but I didn't think we could do more with it. So we figured we needed to feed the artistic side of our brains.”

To bring the concept to life, the duo recruited retail designer Diego Burdi, who has played a significant role in the transformation of various Holt Renfrew, Davids and Indigo Books and Music stores. In this case, Burdi gave Teatro Verde the architectural trappings of a luxury residence – high ceilings, a statement staircase, stainless steel cabinetry, giant glass-fronted refrigerators in what they call the “floral kitchen” and polished concrete floors made to look like terrazzo – while allowing the products to play the starring role.

Good thing, too, as the store is a floor-to-ceiling funhouse of merchandise with personality to spare. (Don't miss the chandeliers dripping with castoff cutlery.)

But while it's definitely not an exercise in minimalism, neither is Teatro Verde a merchandising mess. The departments are divided into gardening, homekeeping, cosmetics, kitchen, stationery, occasional furniture and kids and pets sections. Gibson says they have the luxury of being able to continually recreate the spaces, just as might be done with theatre sets.

Over all, Gibson gravitates toward highly regarded brands that have yet to saturate the market. Think Roger & Gallet, the India Hicks Island Living collection by Crabtree & Evelyn, Bella Cucina, earth-friendly Caldrea cleaning products and Medard de Noblat china.

And for every one-of-a-kind item, such as an Amish hand-turned oak column ($4,750), there are 10 recession-friendly gift ideas – plastic cups with 3-D puppy images ($16.95), shea butter soaps from Fresh ($15 and up).

Gibson, who travels to such far-flung places as Indonesia, China, France and Italy to source his eclectic goods, shows off a computer desk built into the body of an abstractly constructed horse ($9,995); the varnished melamine head emerges from one side and the hind quarters jet out from the other. Stack it with some fine bottles of scotch and gin and it becomes an open liquor cabinet.

Meanwhile, auto enthusiasts or tykes who have outgrown their Hot Wheels will make a beeline for the Bugatti toy race car ($7,000) parked discreetly under a desk topped with books.

A sublime combination of scents – fresh flowers, soaps, room diffusers – drift throughout the store. But just because the floral arrangements look real doesn't mean they always are – vases filled with uncannily realistic silk peonies and hydrangeas show that faux is very much in fashion.

And whereas weekends usher in young families – moms eye Kate Spade vases and picture frames (from $85) while dads busy kids with sock monkeys and kitschy gewgaws – weekdays draw chic tourists and brides-to-be who come to register for less conventional gifts.

Pellegrino, for one, is ecstatic about his spacious new setup, which not only showcases his “floral couture” to better effect but also affords him a better view of the shopping action. “Now, I feel more liberated. It's free and inspiring and refreshing,” he says. “When people come around the corner [to the floral area], they're hit. And their reaction says it all; it's so much more interactive.”

In keeping with the home and garden theme, Gibson says he plans to introduce more greenery and landscaping outside the store in time for spring 2010. And so the story continues. The play goes on.