The Local Nursery

I went garden shopping two days ago, out to a garden center called Sargents on 18th. The 18th is to differentiate it from Sargents on 2nd, which is the other location for this particular nursery. I went there to buy annuals for the front porch.

I should tell you about this place. Sargents is a great place to visit. They have tons of really good trees and shrubs, a huge gorgeous pond with stream and bridges, benches for resting, a playset for kids. Neat garden ornaments and pots and urns, including the cobalt blue that I really like and drool over all the time but never buy because they are so expensive. They have perennials and annuals, and are the most expensive nursery around Rochester. Other nurseries are not too much cheaper - somehow plants have been hit by inflation like everything else - but Sargents always seems to cost the most. Which always makes me think that they are the best.

I headed out there with a mission in mind, a mission to buy the annuals for my front porch. These are always the most important annuals - VIPs if you will - because they are seen by everyone, and if done right they get lots and lots of compliments and envious requests for how to recreate them. I make the potting soil myself, and plant selected annuals, and add fertilizer to the soil, and then have a regular liquid feeding schedule too. And they are drop dead gorgeous most years. There have been a few years that weren't quite as successful, but that was when I was starting out and before I had The Plan. Three hanging baskets and three window boxes; usually red, white, and blue; trailing in the baskets, upright in the boxes.

So you can see that these annuals are important, and the reason I went to this high-end nursery is because they must be primo plants of certain varieties that have proven to reach maximum gorgeousness in the environment that is my north-facing with overhang front porch.

I was bitterly disappointed.

Sargents, for all its lush awesomeness, has become the most boring nursery for perennials and annuals around. Blah blah blah perennials, no unusual kinds or varieties, just the same-old same-old that everyone has. Blah blah blah and beyond blah on the annuals, very few trailing, almost everything in big individual pots, few flats. Lots of preplanted planters. Ugh. It was a total bust for the annuals that I wanted.

I did wander around and picked up a few perennials to fill in a couple bare spots, some for Ian's rock garden, one for the east garden, one or two for the kidney bed, and a couple others to tuck in here and there. I had to get a silver mound because mine must have died over the winter; gallardia because mine have disappeared over the past couple of years; moonshine yarrow; heliopsis; another plant for the rock garden; and a couple cosmos. Common things. They are all incredibly healthy and good sized, what Sargents does sell they sell well, but, face it, none of these are super exciting plants to find.

There was one annual that did catch my eye. It was this little beauty, called fibre optic grass. It really did look like one of those fibre optic Christmas trees. If I didn't think of grass as my sworn enemy in the garden, I would have brought one home. In fact, looking at this picture I can't imagine why I left it there. After all, I do have Karl Forrester in my garden and that's a grass and it's well-behaved and very nice-appearing.

But really, what would I do with it? It would need to be in a container, and I'm trying very hard to reduce the number of containers that I put up each year. So the ones I do plant need to really count, and counting means color when you're only doing a few. And that means this sweet little guy won't be coming to my home anytime soon.

There were a few things out there that I really liked in the garden decoration areas. This cobalt ball caught my eye because, hey, it's cobalt. I'd probably rather have a couple cobalt urns than the sphere, but it's still a really neat ornament. The stone owls were also rather awesome. They had these small ones that were about 18" high, and some bigger ones that were about 2 feet tall. The small ones were sooo cute. They were also soooo expensive.

I still need to find my VIPs for the front porch. I didn't find them at Sargents, so this weekend I'm planning to hit the big boy - Gertens in the Cities. If you can't find what you need at Gertens, it doesn't exist! Or maybe it exists, but it will take a lot of checking out of many many small nurseries to find. And I'm running out of time, because Mother's Day is this weekend and Mothers Day is the deadline; plant selection drops dramatically around here after that day each year, andI'll be faced with just the leftovers that nobody else wants. And those are great - especially at 70% off - but not good enough for my VIP spots on the front porch. So to Gertens I go!