With more sunlight hours and milder temperatures, you’d almost think spring was around the corner.
Step inside Bradford Greenhouses Garden Gallery and it feels like you’ve made the turn.
A family business with humble beginnings has grown to be a go-to for anything-green store.
And with area gardeners itching to get outside, the Highway 90 facility is gearing up.
“The winter was a little long and at this time of year people are always anxious for spring,” assistant store manager Gabrielle Polman tells Village Media, adding some folks may already be pondering some changes to their outdoor spaces.
Whether it’s in the garden or on a patio or deck, folks are going green, she says.
“People are using their free time and what they have at their disposal to re-purpose things,” Polman says. “They are more and more into recycling materials and reusing things in their gardens instead of disposing of them.
“You’re seeing old bathtubs and tires turned into planters. Even different old household objects like an old wooden chair with the bottom out of it. Put a pot in there and place it on the porch and it’s a plant stand.”
With many folks working from home over the last two years, some are getting creative about where they want to have their conference calls, she says.
“People are also turning their gardens into an office space,” says Polman. “They’re setting up their computers and having an extension of their office outdoors. It creates a nice, peaceful oasis for them to work outside, weather permitting.”
Bradford Greenhouses Garden Gallery in Barrie — along with the original location still on Highway 11 north of Bradford — is a family-run business success story.
When family patriarch Francis Ferragine and his wife, Chiara, immigrated to Canada in 1956 from England, they settled in the Holland Marsh area. They eventually bought property of their own north of Bradford, where they opened their first greenhouse in 1975. Bradford Greenhouses joined Garden Gallery, a group of independently owned garden centres, in 1988.
This spring will be the 29th one for the Highway 90 facility — it has grown from 24,900 square feet in 1993 to more than 200,000 sq. ft. today — which has hosted many large-scale events over the years.
Growing green can also mean going green for many homeowners, Polman says.
“They’re using natural materials now instead of paving and concrete. They’re doing walkways out of moss and things that are softer for the landscape. Instead of ripping everything out, they’re trying to go more natural with less impact on the environment.”
People are also planting their own cut-flowers (the ones that are pretty to look at): sunflowers, dahlias, astible, echinacea and black-eyed Susan. Or they’re growing their own vegetables to try and be a little more self-sustainable, she adds.
“It depends where they live, but container growing has expanded quite a bit,” says Polman. “People in the city who may not have the space for a garden do their decks up with pots.”
But until Mother Nature turns up the heat, we’ll just keep looking forward to spring.
“People come here sometimes just for a little bit of tranquillity and walking around the plants,” she adds. “Some people have fur babies (pets) and some people have plant babies. You can nurture them. You can talk to them. You can watch them grow.
“And they clean the air by absorbing CO2.”
