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Where To Buy the Best Plants in NJ & NY!
by DIG-IT
Snuggle up in your favorite chair, open Ruah Donnelly's The Adventurous Gardener, Where to Buy the Best Plants in New York and New Jersey, and get ready for some fun!
With the way plant hybrids come and go at the speed of computer, telephone, and camera technologies, it is daunting enough to even think of incorporating specific cultivars into your own yard, much less going out and finding them.
“The nursery trade has become so rich and diverse. Gardeners need help," says Donnelly, who has done the leg work for you.
She has tracked down the extraordinary and the rare, the exquisite and fun, with the passion of a rain forest medicine woman looking for herbs. She visited nurseries and growers, owned by people who live by the axiom “To thine own self be true," and put them all in a book. “I started for fun. I took notes and they became files. I started with Massachusetts nurseries. I wanted unusual things for my flower boxes. The marvelous richness of what is available drove me."
The Adventurous Gardener (The Horticultural Press, 2005) lists specialists who grow and sell tree peonies, iris, bonsai, wild flowers, nut trees, persimmon trees, heirloom apples, dwarf conifers, conservatory plants, gesneriads, alpines, topiaries, clematis, aquatics, orchids, willow cuttings, roses, natives, rhododendrons, fine trees, distinctive shrubs, specimens, collectors' exotic ornamentals, uncommon annuals, tree and shrub seeds.
And the fun part is Donnelly treats them all as "Destinations."
Let's see - crack open the book to any page - to Anything Grows Flower Farm, page 235: plants that survive seashore conditions - high winds, sandy soil, salt air... "These plants swell in importance as New Jersey struggles with development and drought. Every year, the owners play around with unusual dry land material, such as epilobiums or agastaches, in search of a new treasure."
An information block with contact info, owner's name, hours, and nutshell specialties appear before the page or two describing the nursery, plants, and owner, sometimes with a good story, always with humor. Driving directions are spelled out. But she's not done yet, for Donnelly is thorough. She tells you where to get great food and about other nearby attractions to visit to make the trip complete.
Hmmm... In the "Nearby attraction" blurb on page 236 she recommends Mustache Bill's Diner, "a 1959 Fodero lunch car where breakfast is king," and Reynolds Garden Shop, a large, high-end garden center.
A "Resources for Gardeners" includes web links, associations, plant shows and sales, plant databases and libraries, and gardening books. Nurseries are indexed by type of plant.
A Boston resident, Donnelly became interested in specialty nurseries around New England and wrote her first book, The Adventurous Gardener, Where to buy the best plants in New England in 2000.
"There's not five things anymore; there's hundreds of things. The best nurseries are a little below the radar. I was looking for great plants. Mainstream horticulture does a great job with stuff for the usual garden. If you dig in a little, you want more than that." In her search for the best nurseries, Donnelly gleaned tips from good nurseries, academics, Departments of Agriculture, nursery inspectors, garden clubs, plant show exhibitors...
For her window boxes she found sedums and succulents that grew luxuriantly and “shoved against each other. They throw up flowering stalks and had children."¯
She planted a blue tropical water lily and oxygenating plants in a barrel she placed curbside. “It was the wonder of the neighborhood. It was a wonderful fun thing. I was fooling around with plants."¯
Although Donnelly didn't begin gardening until she was an adult, nature's beauty and seasons were within her spirit. She remembers childhood summers on an old farm. “I sat in a meadow and wondered why such beautiful flowers were not considered garden flowers, but weeds." This human riddle would rise later and change the very face of the constructed landscape.
DonnellyĆ¢ā‚¬ā„¢s seven or eight lives as lawyer, gardener, garden writer, trustee of the New England Wild Flower Society, and plant hunter lecturer have served her well as a guidebook scout and author.
These days Donnelly's interest in birds has inspired her to put up owl and Pileated Woodpecker boxes, built and placed by an expert birder to supplement her berried native shrubs. “I find myself continually at war between love of native plants and artistic plants. There's a great healing in our time for appreciation of our gardens as part of our landscape and as art. In our past, botanists were one thing and horticulturists another with little common ground."
She sees them now coming together, with ethical issues emerging and resulting in a forward way of thinking. “Gardeners are learning that cultivars are not wildlife friendly and that they're not as good for the environment. I think it's made horticulture richer and better."¯
The two Adventurous Gardener books (if you can't find it in New York or Jersey, you'll certainly find it in New England!) accommodate her love for native plants by covering nurseries that specialize in them, such as Broken Arrow near New Haven, a leading Kalmia grower.
“It's (using natives) a door to the natural world. Once you enter that door you see things more clearly. There's nothing like it. It's a science education, an artistic endeavor, a color school, a mental conundrum."
Donnelly urges gardeners to ask good nursery owners for advice on plant selections. “They're plantsmen. They know how to look at a plant over the seasons. They've singled out the best cultivars for you. It's not just the plants as they're grown - they've been well selected and vetted by experts who are a wonderful shortcut to a great garden. Let them sort it out for you. A nursery will never sell you something that's going to die. I have so much respect for small specialty professional nurserymen. They perform an incredible service. They're a very valuable part of what makes a fun obsession.
“This is the guide book I've wanted myself,"¯ she continues. “It's made me and my work popular, not just with armchair gardeners, but with beginners who just want to poke around."
Well, is it March yet? Time to put this nursery field guide in action! It belongs in every gardener's backpack.
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