As both a grower and buyer, Gardens Plus owner Dawn Golloher knows how essential it is to support the agricultural sector in Peterborough County. That’s why she remains grateful for support from local agricultural programming.
Located in the Township of Douro-Dummer, Gardens Plus is in its 29th season as not only a garden centre specializing in perennials but a destination for flourishing display gardens. Dawn and her husband Doug moved to the property in 1996 and opened the nursery in 1997, while continuing to add more and more gardens and greenhouses over nearly three decades.
Today, Gardens Plus specializes in hostas, daylilies, and other easy-care perennials. From coneflowers and coral bells to hellebores, everything is either grown on site without the use of pesticides or sourced from trusted growers in Ontario.
Always eager to connect with customers and provide gardening tips, Dawn has also given back to her local community by donating time and plants to community gardens, including a flower bed located just across the street at the Donwood Fire Hall.
To attract customers to explore their many blooms, Gardens Plus has been a longtime member of the Kawartha Choice FarmFresh economic development program. The initiative provides a brand identity for local producers, a network for members to share and access resources, and an online database for buyers to find producers in Peterborough County, the City of Peterborough, and the City of Kawartha Lakes.
Dawn says her favourite thing about the program is that it makes it easy for buyers to support local.
“Now more than ever, everybody’s buying in Canada and buying around the corner, and it’s just amazing how we’ve all embraced it,” Dawn says. “I feel really good about saying that everything’s coming from Ontario.”
To further make it easy for buyers to support local, Peterborough County is partnering to support the Kawartha Local Food Wholesale program, and initiative that strengthens the region’s capacity for local food distribution in Peterborough County, the City of Kawartha Lakes, and the City of Peterborough. The Green Circle Food Hub, developed in partnership with Graze & Gather, will streamline connections between local producers and wholesale buyers.
“I think anything we can do to help local, to encourage shopping local and buying from the local farmers is great, and it’s great Peterborough County is on board for all these different things,” Dawn says. “We have to care about our backyards, and we have to care about our small businesses.”
Gardens Plus is open at 136 County Road 4 in Donwood from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, and online anytime at gardensplus.ca.
The Local Advantage in Peterborough County is a branded editorial feature series celebrating the farmers, food producers, food retailers, and agri-tourism businesses that make The Kawarthas thrive, created in partnership with Peterborough County’s Economic Development & Tourism Division.
Agriculture is a key economic driver and a point of pride for Peterborough County, with local farms producing a wide variety of high-quality goods, from traditional crops and livestock to organic and specialty products, reflecting the strength and diversity of this vital sector. With a growing focus on sustainability, local food systems, agri-innovation, and agri-tourism, agriculture offers strong potential for growth and diversification.
The Local Advantage with Peterborough County series spotlights the Kawartha Choice FarmFresh and Kawartha Local Food Wholesale initiatives, which aim to strengthen connections from farm to table across our region.
For more information about economic development and tourism in Peterborough County, visit www.ptbocounty.ca/ecdev and The Kawarthas Tourism at thekawarthas.ca.
