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A Look Back on our Achievements Over the Last 5 Years
Here at Kiwi Nurseries we like to do what the plants do and grow! Since our last anniversary milestone we have done a lot of growing. From increasing our annual and houseplant selection, winning awards and getting a petting zoo we are always looking for new opportunities. A lot of our most memorable events started at our 40th anniversary, such as our Easter Egg Hunt, Craft Beer Night, Haunted House and Christmas Walk. These events have since gone on to become both staff and customer favorites and have allowed us to donate to the Parkland Food Bank and YESS. We have a lot of exciting new things planned for this year so stay tuned for more growing!
Houseplants and Annuals
With the greenhouse built in 2017 and the winter shop we have been able to expand our selection of plants over the last few years! This is great news for all of the houseplant lovers as we are able to get in regular shipments of easy to grow and unique houseplants. We have also been able to expand our annual selection, if you had come to the nursery 5 years ago you would not see any annuals for sale. Since then we started to bring in vegetables and have now transitioned into flowering annuals as well! This year we are very excited to be starting some of our own annuals in our growing facilities!
Young Retailer Award
In 2022 Ashleigh Munro, Garden Centre Coordinator for Kiwi Nurseries was the first Canadian to win the Young Retailer Award by Green Profit and flew to the Cultivate horticulture conference to accept the award! Ashleigh is also a director on the Chamber of Commerce and represents Alberta on Garden Centres Canada.
Read the article HERE
Petting Zoo
We have had a lot of additions to our petting zoo in the last 5 years! The chickens have been a part of the petting zoo for years, but did you know we also have ducks and dwarf goats? The ducks became a part of the Kiwi family in 2022, they can be found west of the retail yard near the chicken coop usually splashing and quacking in the creek. The goats were added in 2022 as well and are located west of the retail yard near the road. If you have come to the Easter Egg Hunt, Christmas Walk or Haunted House you have walked past their pen!
Kiwi's Haunted House
Our first Haunted House started quite small, those who attended will remember it all began in the greenhouse with a short haunted house walk through some decorated rooms and tunnels. We raised $1,150 this year and a few crates of food for the Parkland Food Bank, we were thrilled!
With the COVID outbreak occurring in 2021, we had to get inventive to continue to run our events so we moved the haunted house to the trail system. This was also the year of the whistle lights, which were handed out at check in to ticket holders and could be heard throughout the nursery through the entire of the event!
The 2022 Haunted House was quite the success with between 200-900 people a night, this was significantly busier than previous years and allowed us to expand on some of our ideas for the 2023 season.
The 2023 years was our best yet, with between 700-1300 people a night we had so much fun seeing everyone in costumes and coming out to enjoy some spooky family fun. With the increase in visitors we also had an increase in donations as well and ended up with 3 truck loads of food bank donations for the Parkland Food Bank!
We have big plans for the 2024 season and are hoping to make many improvements to give our visitors the best experience possible!
