Headed home, plants in tow

Plants!
Originally uploaded by sassycrafter

We're headed home from GWA with a van full of plants. Counting all of the larger plants and small 4-inch pots, we must have close to 75 plants in the van with us. And miraculously, we still had room for our luggage. We're hoping to get home by mid-afternoon so that we can start getting them in the ground. Right now our ETA is 3pm, but the rain could slow us down.

Plant Delights Nursery

Plant Delights Nursery
Originally uploaded by sassycrafter

Today we visited Plant Delights Nursery as part of the Garden Writers Association symposium. Holy cow--it was amazing.

I tried to exercise some restraint and ended up buying five plants: two cannas (of course), an agave, a river oats, and a funky goldenrod.

I took a bunch more photos on the regular camera and will post them later.

It's that time of year...

Kim and the incredibly tall cannas at Cistus Nursery outside Portland
Originally uploaded by Gardening in a Minute

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.



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!



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.



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.



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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.