It's that time of year...

Monday, September 21, 2009

Admittedly, I've been a lackadaisical blogger for most of 2009. Sorry. I've just been busy. And speaking of busy, it's time for me to hit the road to the annual Garden Writers Association symposium which is taking place in Raleigh, NC. You may recall that I went to last year’s symposium in Portland and took a lot of photos and also blogged about it.

Metal (steel?) Cistus Nursery sign

Last year we visited some amazing nurseries likeCistus Nursery and Joy Creek Nursery. As you may recall, I fell head over heels in love with Cistus. This year it could be even more dangerous for me – we’re going to Plant Delights Nursery!

For those of you who don’t already know, Plant Delights is the gardening catalog that true plant geeks salivate over because it has such an amazing array of hard to find plants. Some might even go so far as to call it “hort porn.” And the catalog itself makes for an amazing read. The narratives are witty and remind me of the J. Peterman catalogs in that they’re just as fabulous as the items themselves.

The special treat is that we get to see their on-site garden, which I’ve heard is absolutely amazing. And did I mention that we’re driving a van up there? I would loooooove to pack it full of plants to bring back, but sadly, my budget is super tight right now. I’m telling myself that I can bring back one plant. I’m leaning toward an agave or a yucca, since they’re probably the twp plants that I have the least chance of killing. I’m especially fond of Yucca filamentosa ‘Color Guard.’** But holy moly—if I wasn’t afraid of killing it, I’d buy a Colocasia gigantea!

Tom wins the GWA Gold Award for On-Air Talent

We’re also up for three GWA Media Awards. Last year we won a gold award for the “Gardening in a Minute” radio show in the category of “On-Air Talent: Radio.” Fingers crossed that we’ll win gold again this year!

I’ll be sure to take plenty of photos again this year and will try to blog a little bit from the road. Emily’s bringing her laptop and said she’d let me use it.

Emily in the plant center

And just for fun, here’s a shot of a gnome I spotted during one of the garden tours last year. Think we’ll see gnomes in North Carolina? I’m hoping so.

Vintage garden gnome

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** The funny thing is that I bought three plants at the Kanapaha Garden Festival this spring that I thought were a cultivar of Y. filamentosa, but it looks like they might be Y. aloifolia ‘Variegata’. I wanted to put them in the new front bed, but the trouble is that they can get up to seven feet tall. Yikes! Sadly, they've been sitting in pots waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. I think I'll put them in the backyard since it's the only place I can think of that gets enough sun and would have enough space.

2 comments:

Jake said...

I bet you had fun! I think you should also get the Colocasia gigantea, Colocasia are so easy to grow and cold hardy, just had water.

Jake

Kim Taylor Kruse said...

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And indeed, I thought about getting a giant colocasia at Plant Delights, but I decided to hold off since I think I can get that one back here in Gainesville.