Canandaigua has no shortage of places to buy plants, but Mayflowers Nursery & Garden Center on Highway 332 has distinguished itself enough to earn 2025 Silver for Best Gardening Store/Nursery from FLX Finest voters who take their gardens seriously. In a region where the growing season is short, the winters are brutal, and the soil varies dramatically from lake shore to hilltop, the value of a nursery that understands local conditions cannot be overstated.

Mayflowers stocks the expected range — annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, and all the soil amendments, tools, and supplies a home gardener needs — but the depth of the perennial and native plant selection is where the nursery earns its reputation. The Finger Lakes gardening community has increasingly embraced pollinator-friendly and native plantings, and Mayflowers has kept pace with that shift rather than relying solely on the petunias-and-marigolds playbook. The staff can walk you through what works in your specific exposure and soil type, which is the kind of advice that saves money and frustration over the course of a growing season.

The Highway 332 location puts Mayflowers in the commercial corridor between Canandaigua and Farmington, accessible from both the lake town crowd and the suburban communities to the north. For spring and early summer shopping — when the nursery is at its most vibrant and the selection is at its deepest — this is a destination worth planning a morning around. Bring a list, but leave room on it, because the impulse purchases here tend to be the ones that end up being your favorite thing in the garden by August.