Garden Gate

Tried to buy a water plant for my pond, asked for help and told I needed to wait for the aquatics guy. Waited 10 more minutes only to find out the plant I wanted was not for sale it was part of a display piece. What a bunch of crap and waste of time. Better aquatic plant place in Tamarac on university north of McNab. I do don’t like wasting my time!

When we drove up to this place, it was totally not what we were expecting. My husband didn’t even want to stop. First of all, it’s in a weird old mall, so we almost missed it thinking there couldn’t be a garden center in a mall. However, it is in a corner of the Sears store on the southwest corner of Copans and Federal. Even if you walk right up to it, it doesn’t look like much. However, through the eyes of a gardening connoisseur (me), it was a treasure trove. First of all, I love open pollinated and heirloom vegetable seeds (i.e. they shouldn’t be genetically modified or hybridized). However, I don’t have the patience at this point in my life to grow certain vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant completely from seed. In Austin, heirloom veggie starts were fairly easy to find. However, in Broward, it’s not so easy. I’ve found a few places but am always searching for more.
So at Garden Gate, it sounds like the owner actually starts some herself from seed. I think I missed the arrival of the starts around October, but there were some heirloom eggplant and tomato starts available.
They also seemed to have native plants available which is another interest of mine. These are plants that love it here and are easy to grow because they are already acclimated. This is very important in South Florida which is a zone 10B and unlike most of the U.S. growing climates. Our usual gardening plants don’t necessarily work here. Tropical plants are kind of fun, and a lot of them do well, but they aren’t necessarily native, so it can cause problems some times.
And lastly, they had some fun vegetables and herbs. It wasn’t just your run of the mill ones. They had stevia plants (you know the natural sweetener) while I was there which were on sale.
Speaking of sale, I also thought their prices were extremely reasonable on the herb and veggie starts.
So thank you Garden Gate for being a little different.

Garden Gate is a cute little garden center appendage onto the Sears at the little mall in Pompano. One of the owners is a native plant enthusiast and she usually has a decent selection of natives. Thrown in are some carnivorous plants, bird feeders, orchids and other garden schwag. We’ve picked up a couple of interesting little natives that are doing well in our yard. Overall a nice little operation.