Flash Back: Nursery Hopping 2014

I suppose that having gardening as a main hobby means that nursery hopping is likely secondary hobby. The Seattle area as some pretty good nurseries from which I obtain plants and inspiration. Here's a small selection:

Flower World. This Maltby area nursery is vast and reasonably priced. It does not have much in the way of choice collector type plants, but it does have many staples. It also has a houseplant section that is unrivaled in the Seattle area and perhaps all of Washington. Here is the interior of one of their many greenhouses featuring baskets of glowing variegated Algerian ivy dripping down onto ranks of evergreen shrubs:

Here is a small part of the houseplants selection at Flower World:

Molbak's. This Woodville institution has a large selection of plants, though in recent years it has shifted its focus more toward garden décor. This year they had a nice selection of ornamental grasses, with these handsome Yucca rostrata nearby.

Lowe's. Normally I would not include a big-box retailer on any list of nurseries I would consider worth a visit, but their regional buyer has been bringing in some interesting plants (for Seattle anyway) the last few season. Here is one of the surprising finds this past summer: several large palms at reasonable prices, about half the price of comparable plants at local specialty nurseries, on the few occasions when they are even on offer. Most of the plants below were in the $59-79 range for 3-6' / 1-2m tall specimens. The selection included windmill palm, Trachycarpus fortunei, pindo or jelly palm, Butia capitata, blue hesper palm, Brahea armata, desert fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, Mediterranean fan palm, Chaermerops humils, and the blue form of the Mediterranean fan palm, Chaemerops humilis var. cerifiera. Some of these are not reliably hardy in the Seattle area, particularly Washingtonia and Brahea, which leads me to think they were ordered for California stores but ended up in Seattle instead. I was going to get one of the blue Mediterranean fan palms (which I had never seen for sale at this size), but they were snapped up by the time I returned and I had to settle for a jelly palm.

 

Sky Nursery: This Shoreline nursery nearly doubled its retail space in recent years. It has also been expanding its inventory of interesting plants. This season they had a good selection of agaves, with some fairly large (for Seattle) specimens available. Here is a herd of Agave parryi var. huachucensis. A couple of these may have come home with me.