THE STORY OF OUR GARDEN'S GROWTH

Gary has always had a passion for plants. In 1996 we started a small garden center at one of the General Stores that we owned at the time. At that time we like some of the large chains purchased our plants from other growers, but he wanted more. He wanted to be able to grow it all right here in this gardening zone and not bring everything in from Southern Ontario or off shore locations.

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In 1999 Turners Garden Center after 20 years in business was up for sale. And the rest as they say is history. It was a very long summer as we moved all the greenhouses, furnaces and all the other stuff required to run a greenhouse operation from Turners property to our Store Property. We operated very successfully from that location until 2009 when we decided to sell our business and retire, ya right! Anyway we didn’t want to give up the greenhouse business it is really only 6 months of the year work and would give us a slow transition into retirement. So…..once again we moved it all home to the farm to what we know will be the final resting place as this is certainly our final resting place. That was 13 years ago. Gary along with a great team continues to grow the same great plants every year.

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Currently he grows over 1,000 varieties of plants including Annuals, Perennials, Herbs and Vegetables. Every year I try in earnest to get him to grow less - as 1,000 varieties is a lot of different seeds to order with a lot of different tags to order, scheduling of planting dates, transplanting dates etc. Life could be much simpler! I think the fact that this year he has 33 different varieties of tomatoes confirms, that I have not been very successful in cutting down on the number of varieties that we have for sale.  The Garden Center opens every year the weekend closet to May 1st and closes once we are sold out usually mid to late June.

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Shop early for the best selection really applies in the case of “plant shopping” at Saunders.

 

Carla Saunders