Nursery School

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence. 

Benjamin Disraeli

This week we're having Show-and-Tell. 

I want to show and tell you about some plants I've met and some nurseries I visited a few weeks ago, all within half an hour or so of San Pancho.

 
Do you remember my telling you about my palapa posts, how a vine starts in the top of a palm and winds its way to the ground?

How, eventually, it will rob the nourishment from its host tree and grow into a giant? I photographed this one on the grounds of a jungle nursery near Sayulita -- an higuera blanca, many years later:

We visited the Sayulita nursery just after a wind storm that dropped this palm. Look at the tiny root ball on what was a very tall palm.

One of the other nurseries, or viveros, as they call them in Mexico, is down a muddy back road somewhere east of Mezcales, between Bucerias and Vallarta.

(That would be the road on the day we visited.)

But, as usual, there are treats at the ends of the roads. This beautiful flower, for example, is fragrant white ginger. I intend to plant lots of it.

I was happy to discover the many varieties of ferns that are available, as I may miss my Pacific Northwest fern collection more than anything else in my current garden. Several varieties of tropical ferns will grow in the sun, others prefer the shade. 

Ferns as big as these...

Ferns as big as trees!

 

I was surprised to see several plants in the local nurseries that also flourish in my garden in the cool damp of western Washington: geraniums, succulents, star jasmine, and these caladiums.

That said, I am delighted at the opportunity to garden with plants that either do not grow at all in the northern climes or are, at best, temperamental house plants!

 

 

 

Loving visual texture as I do, I am an avid foliage gardener. I can't wait to start playing with plants with corrugated leaves, colored leaves, and giant leaves, like my favorite hostas on steroids.

 

Then, of course, there are the flowers. Heliconia, birds of paradise, hibiscus, ixora, plumbago, bougainvillea, lotus and ginger and frangipani, and others I still have to learn. Some of the names are as delicious as the blossoms.

Oh yes -- and then there are the palms! Little ones, tall ones, potted ones and accent ones, ones with coconuts and ones with beads.

 

 
   

  
 

        

   

 

 

The choices are absurdly abundant, the prices ridiculously low. What better combination for a gardener ready to begin anew?

And I haven't even told you about the fruit trees!

Well, it'll have to wait. It's a drizzly day here in Seattle, and I have to get back to work. What kind of work, you ask? Take a look at the Photo of the Week over there in the left column, and you'll see...

☂    ☂    ☂

Comments

[Candice]

So glad you asked about that strange and wonderful flower, Gretchen, because I didn't know, so I researched it. It is a type of ginger! Its common name is beehive ginger, its botanical name zingiber spectabilis. I've only seen it in one nursery garden. It comes in several varieties. I think I need a corner for strange and wonderful flowers, don't you?

xo
C

[Jeanne]

So beautiful! Everything you pictured is just gorgeous! I can only imagine what this will add to your beautiful casa!

[Gretchen Goodliffe]

PS: What are those incredibly interesting "chain mail" flowers.. the ones that start at the bottom with a deep kind of rust and slowly transform into a creamy colour... and look as though are made from some sort of laquered chain..... I think 18th pic from the bottom.....

[Curt]

I like your nursery school. Great photos.

As usual!

Bring on the Thanksgiving Turkey!

Curt

[Gretchen Goodliffe]

Just stunning...... you are going to have a garden to behold, I just know it. You capture such a delight for everything beautiful, you will have no problemas just "being" in Mexico.
LOVE those verigated leaves too.
GG