The platform

Hortagora is a B2B marketplace where Canadian growers sell nursery stock to retail garden centres, and garden centres compare availability and prices from multiple growers in one place. Membership is vetted, so the trade stays the trade. Applications are open now.

For growers

List your availability once, pre-book through the season, and fill orders from garden centres in every province — without the spreadsheet chase.

For garden centres

Browse availability across the country, pre-book ahead of the season, and place orders in one platform.

Why we built it

I spent fifteen years at Make It Green Garden Centre, an Ontario garden centre, on the buying side. Garden-centre buying is the kind of work that doesn't end: a dozen or more supplier relationships, each with its own weekly availability list arriving by Excel, PDF or fax, each with its own minimums and its own ordering channel. In 2020, when lockdowns meant customers couldn't walk the aisles, I built an ordering program for Make It Green. It carried us through the busiest spring we'd ever had, and it got me thinking about what a streamlined ordering system could do for the whole trade.

One observation stayed with me from all those years at the buying desk: some of the best material we ever brought in came from growers most garden centres never find, because finding them takes effort the season doesn't leave room for. Hortagora exists to close that gap.

— Derek King, founder

How pricing works

Growers pay a commission on completed sales; the platform is free for garden centres. Exact terms are shared after your membership is approved.