Gardener Trails

Gardener Trails is an approved Planned Development on about 160 acres of unincorporated Polk County, east of Haines City. The approved plan is 430 single-family detached homes on lots of varying sizes, at a net density of roughly 3.4 units per acre. The county Planning Commission approved it in August 2025, and the county commission established a community development district for it in January 2026. Nothing is built, no builder has been assigned, and nothing is for sale.

Both, unfortunately, and you should search both. The community development district that governs this land is legally named with the longer spelling, Gardener, and that is what the county's district case is captioned. But inside that same county file, the shorter spelling, Gardner, appears in most of the attachments. One county case file, two spellings, and no marketing material yet to settle it. If you are trying to track this project yourself, run both. We track it under both, plus the underlying zoning case name, so a spelling change does not lose you.

Because the zoning case was filed under that name, and the developer entity carries it too. This is worth untangling, because it is genuinely misleading. Poinciana is a large, long-established community area straddling the Polk County and Osceola County line, with tens of thousands of existing residents. This project is not part of it and is not in it, though it sits within a couple of miles. The county case caption and the site plan title block both use the Poinciana name, and the marketed name that emerged later is Gardener Trails. When you see Poinciana attached to this parcel in a county record, it is the file name, not the place.

Yes, and this one has an unusually strong second confirmation. In Polk County a Planning Commission approval does not become final if a de novo appeal is filed within seven days. No appeal was filed for this project. Beyond that, the Board of County Commissioners went on to adopt an ordinance establishing a community development district over this land in January 2026, which is an action the board would not take over a development approval that was still contingent. So the entitlement is settled by both the absence of an appeal and by a later, separate board action that depends on it.

It is the single most financially significant fact on this page, so read it carefully. A CDD is a special-purpose local government that issues bonds to pay for infrastructure such as roads, water, sewer and stormwater, then repays those bonds through an annual assessment charged to every home in the district. That assessment appears on your county tax notice as a non-ad-valorem line item, separate from and on top of your HOA dues, and on communities of this type it commonly runs to four figures a year. The district here is established and effective. What has not been published is the per-unit assessment, because bonds have not been validated. Anyone quoting you a CDD figure for this community today is guessing.

Nobody yet. No homebuilder is named in the staff report, the Final Order, the site plan or the district file. The parties on record are a land-use attorney, a private landowner and a development entity, which is the standard pre-builder pattern: entitle the land, form the district to finance the infrastructure, then sell lots to homebuilders. The fact that the district is already established suggests infrastructure financing is being lined up, which usually precedes builder announcements rather than following them.

South of Chinook Road, north of Halibut Road and east of Caspian Road, in unincorporated Polk County east of Haines City and roughly two and a half miles from the Poinciana community area. There are no street addresses or platted lots yet.

The approval specifically permits lot widths below 50 feet, decreased lot sizes and reduced setbacks compared with the county's baseline, which the Final Order lists as the express purpose of the request. Lots are described as being of varying sizes. In practice a 430-home community on 160 acres with sub-50-foot lots is a production-housing pattern rather than an estate one. No floor plans, square footages or elevations exist, because no builder has been assigned.

A split arrangement worth knowing about. A collector road runs through and divides the site; the county will accept that road after it is constructed. The local roads inside the community are to be maintained by the community development district, which is to say by the homeowners through their assessments. That distinction is one of the things a CDD assessment actually pays for, and it is a fair question to ask again when documents are available at contract.

Polk County Public Schools assigns attendance zones by physical address, and no addressed home exists here yet, so any school named today would be a guess. This corner of the county, between Haines City and the Poinciana area, has absorbed substantial new housing and attendance boundaries have moved accordingly. Run the specific address through the district's locator once addresses are assigned rather than relying on any map, including ours.

As unincorporated Polk County land, a tax bill would combine county millage, the school board, the water management district and other special districts, with no city millage, and then the community development district assessment on top as a separate non-ad-valorem line. Pull the composite rate from the Polk County Property Appraiser rather than relying on a figure quoted in a listing, and treat the CDD as a real recurring cost rather than a footnote. Florida has no state income tax, which is often what starts this arithmetic for relocating buyers.

No date has been announced. The Planned Development approval is final and the district is established, but there is no plat, no builder and no construction approval on the public record. Treat any date you encounter as a target rather than a commitment.

Join the interest list on this page. We read Polk County's Planning Commission and county commission records directly, which is how a 430-home approval filed under one name, drawn under another and districted under a third ended up documented here while there is still nothing to buy.