Expanding Our Horizons: Check Out Our New Building!

We are thrilled to announce that construction of our incredible new building is now complete and the doors are open—we are so excited to share it with all of you. Before we dive in, let’s clear one thing up: we’re not moving! Our new building will be twelve feet away from the original. We are still open, and we are still here!

This process is truly geared toward providing our customers with the best experience they can possibly have, giving our team an incredible working environment, and making sure our plants are happy.

Our Legacy

Before we look forward to the exciting new building coming to Royal City Nursery, let’s look back at what it’s taken us to get here:

“I’m Tanya, and I want to own Royal City Nursery and become a horticultural apprenticeship instructor at Humber College, just like my dad.”

These are the famed words I shared as a 10-year-old at a friend’s birthday party. Now, over 40 years and three generations of success and perseverance later, it’s incredible to see how far that childhood declaration has gotten us.

Over the years, Royal City Nursery has grown and quite literally blossomed from modest beginnings. My grandfather started our business as a field of shrubs and evergreens. If you wanted to buy a plant, he’d walk with you into the field, dig it up, and wrap it for you to take home. Over the years, we moved, expanded, and flourished despite a multitude of obstacles that could have held us back, which makes us all the more delighted to grow into this new building with the support of our incredible community, customers, and our team. I think my grandfather would be proud to see how far we’ve come.

Construction

So, what is this beautiful new building all about? In order to truly honour our legacy and–of course–our Earth Day Birthday, we need  to continue demonstrating our commitment to sustainability; we’ve ensured that our building is as good for the environment as it is for us.

Our new flooring will feature radiant heat for both the comfort of our plants and the people who come to buy them! This heating method is extremely efficient: while overhead heating methods keep heat at the ceiling, radiant floor heating emanates heat from the ground where the plants, our customers, and our employees can all benefit from it.

Another sustainable feature of the new building we’re particularly excited about is our parallel-strand lumber construction. Parallel-strand lumber is manufactured by bonding parallel wood strands with adhesive under high pressure, resulting in a construction material that is vastly stronger and denser than an average hunk of wood. Even better, parallel-strand lumber is created from logging byproducts, making it an incredibly sustainable building material and a mega win-win! As a garden centre owner, it’s important to me that we make eco-conscious decisions every step of the way, and this building is a testament to our dedication.

Organization

In addition to our new and improved building, we’ll be switching up how we organize things outdoors, too. Our parking lot has expanded significantly to increase the number of folks we can accommodate, and we’re adding a convenient drive-thru for soil pick-up so you can get what you need and get out easier.

Inside the building, our displays and departments will be grouped a bit differently, too. We want to make your lives easier, so our new shop will feature solution-based displays to help cut down on aimless wandering and give our customers a more pleasant and efficient shopping experience!

Looking to start some seeds? Don’t worry: you won’t have to walk from one side of the building to the other to get your hands on both the seeds and the seed-starting equipment. It’ll also be easier than ever for Royal City Nursery’s Landscape Solutions to offer you the best service possible, as they’ll have their own office space to work from now that we’ve expanded!

Finally, of course, our outdoor plant selection will also be bigger than ever. Our nursery yard will be ready for you to shop fruit trees, privacy plants, smaller perennials and more around mid-April.

As we ease into this transition, we’ll be here to support our customers through every new and exciting change. Just remember: we’re still here, and we’re still the same business that has been offering the Guelph community the very best landscaping services, gardening products, and plants for over 60 years.

We are so excited for the next part of our journey, so stop by to visit our new building and greenhouse and see what’s new today!