{"id":29771,"date":"2021-08-04T22:03:53","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T02:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=29771"},"modified":"2021-08-04T22:10:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T02:10:50","slug":"gardens-of-joy-plants-firms-roots-in-aurora-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/gardens-of-joy-plants-firms-roots-in-aurora-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardens of Joy plants firms roots in Aurora community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cindy Hubble and Deb Wilson-Smith always loved gardening \u2013 but for many years it was just a hobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last eight years, however, their passion has been transformed into a business, Gardens of Joy, and this same passion has been noticed by the Aurora Chamber of Commerce with their Home-Based Business Award, part of their 2021 Business Excellence Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not bad for a business venture which started quite by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe met when our kids were at school,\u201d says Wilson-Smith of how she first crossed paths with fellow Devins Drive Public School mom Hubble. \u201cOur youngest sons were headed into high school and we were both looking to do something a little bit different from our normal day jobs. We both love gardening; a friend of ours put us together, helped us come up with a name and it just went from there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gardens of Joy quickly blossomed, picking up clients through word of mouth throughout the GTA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such client in Markham was, for Hubble, a sure sign that they did indeed take the right career path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were parents of a local family in the area of Devins Drive,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey had a big, beautiful home, lots of gardens, but they were aging. We did their vegetable garden, their beautiful planters, and they were so pleased. For me, that is the moment when I realized \u2018This is fun. I really like this.\u2019 I have a bit off PSW experience, so I love working with seniors and now we have customers who work with us, too. It is about having those conversations out in the garden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Wilson-Smith, that \u201cah-ha\u201d moment was when people simply asked them organically to look after their gardens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was realizing people want our help and are appreciative of the work we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a two-way street and this relationship between they and team with their customers is paramount to their success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important to listen,\u201d she continues. \u201cEarly on, we heard a lot of stories from clients who had people come in, they didn\u2019t listen to what they asked or gave them something they didn\u2019t ask for. For us, it was the realization that listening to our clients was going to be the most important thing. We want to build a relationship. We get to know our customers, we get to know what they like, what they don\u2019t like and it gives us the opportunity to go above and beyond and give them more than they were expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Hubble: \u201cWhen they drive into their driveway, even if there is a weed at the curb, I am going to grab that weed. Maybe we don\u2019t have to, but it is the first thing they are going to see and I don\u2019t want them to see that first. It is the whole picture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From its humble beginnings, Gardens of Joy incorporated in February and as their team grows, the company founders are hoping to continue to grow as well, moving into design and opening up new Gardens of Joy locations throughout the GTA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we first started, we thought it would just be until our boys were out of high school but we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this,\u201d says Hubble. \u201cIt has to mean something. We were at four years [when they were out of high school] and now we\u2019re at eight. We have grown and it is exciting how much further we can take this. It is also exciting to build the team. When it was just Deb and I, it looks a lot different now that we have a staff of eleven less us. We\u2019re learning every single day how to make it better next week and next year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Wilson-Smith: \u201cWe have had a lot of support from people who aren\u2019t our clients but have appreciated the work that we do. We need to say a big thank you to them because we know we do a great job for our clients, but it is really nice when other people are noting us as well and we\u2019re very grateful for all the support. Now that we have this [Chamber] award, it feels really good, like we\u2019re doing something here \u2013 we\u2019re growing, we\u2019re part of the community, doing our jobs, building beautiful gardens and ultimately when we\u2019re doing our jobs we\u2019re in our happy place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on Gardens of Joy, visit gardensofjoy.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cindy Hubble and Deb Wilson-Smith always loved gardening \u2013 but for many years it was just a hobby. For the last eight years, however, their passion has been transformed into a business, Gardens of Joy, and this same passion has been noticed by the Aurora Chamber of Commerce with their Home-Based Business Award, part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-05-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7Kb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 23:48:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}