A week ago it was my birthday. So my youngest son, who lives close by to us, thought he would like to make me a different “gift” this year!
He told me he would like to take me around all the places they sold plants here & that I could choose whatever I liked & he would pay for it! WOW!!!
How many of you have had an offer like that??? For me at least it was the first time in my 6 decades of life that anyone had ever made me an offer like that!
We joked about it on one of the messenger apps on mobile phones; I said “You don’t know your father! I’d buy ALL the plants available!” He wrote back saying “No, only half of them, as I’d buy the other half for me!”
The next day he wrote telling me the best day for us to get together would be on Sunday afternoon when I finished at church. He said he had thought better about visiting ALL the shops & GCs in town as he knew of a better GC half way to Cambridge. He said he had been there occasionally & that the selection of plants was greater & also cheaper & of better quality. So off we went on Sunday afternoon to visit the GC.
I’ve visited few GCs, not having my own car, so it’s not easy to compare one with another. At least THIS one had a great deal more plants than others I’ve visited & a lot less other stuff! It wasn’t very well signposted & neither did it look in any way “flashy”. All this seemed like a good indication to me as I don’t like the GCs where they seem a LOT more interested in selling expensive stuff than in selling top quality plants & having a good selection of them, which is all that interests me in a GC!
I wasn’t too disappointed either. There was quite a wide range of plants for sale at, I thought, reasonable prices. The quality wasn’t too bad either. Wandering around we came to the “greenhouse” & there we saw many tomato plants/seedlings. Here I was disappointed as a great many of the plants were in very bad condition! There were lots of plants a couple of feet tall in 3″ pots!!! Some even had flowers & I spotted one plant that even had tiny tomatoes!!! Some of these were the much more expensive grafted tomatoes. On the other hand they did have others that were in perfect condition & that I would have bought without hesitation. But as I have at least 5x the number of plants I can possibly grow on the balcony I didn’t get any.
As this is getting rather long I’ll show you the 3 plants I ended up buying:
My, doesn’t this Fuchsia really stand out when the sun falls on it! This will go in the trough on the balcony floor in front of the door onto the balcony where I can see it shine brilliantly whenever the sun falls on it!
The King's garden 