Strawberry Hill Farms, Part 3

We left off with a sampling of Strawberry Hill's tomato selection. Today I present the last of the pictures I took there. I saved some of the best stuff for last.

We begin with petunias. As I've said, I would not buy petunias for myself, but they are sweet flowers. Strawberry Hill had a much larger color selection than shown here, but I thought all these colors were appropriate together.

 

These, however, were my favorite petunias of the day. I've never seen a flower bred to have green parts. The effect is attractive, though.

 

Next is the biggest reason Strawberry Hill is my favorite place in town: gooseberries. Gooseberries are high on my list of plants to grow at some point in my life. When I first saw this container, I thought it couldn't be what it looked like.

But then I approached the tag. I couldn't get a clear shot of it, but you can tell it says GOOSEBERRY 'Pixwell.' I grew up eating gooseberries similar to these. I'd love to have some.

I don't know what this hanging basket contains. I just liked the shape.

And lastly, here's Scott posing next to more benches of petunias. If he had posed next to some celosia, he would have matched!

 That's all the greatness I encountered at my last trip to Strawberry Hill. Fear not, though--I will go back there, and I will dawdle so I can take pictures of other awesome plants they purvey.

Next post: the last windowsill update.

Strawberry Hill Farms, Part 2

Let's dive back into the action and see more of the illustrious Strawberry Hill Farms!

We left off in the building containing the purple shamrocks. As I was trying to choose between them, I happened to glance over and see this little jewel among the foliage.

In my experience, climbing plants turn into more of a problem than an ornament, but I could make an exception here.

Here's a random herb corner. I couldn't find any on this trip, but Strawberry Hill stocks a cultivar of sage that's variegated green and creamy white. It was ornamental and edible!





This is the smallest wandering jew I've seen at this place. Most of them are massive. (Sneak preview of an upcoming post: I may or may not have obtained one or more wandering jews.)

Here's a wall of wandering jews and other hanging plants. Also featuring geraniums!

I'm not a huge fan of these flowers, but I wonder how they produce different colors of flowers. Are there multiple plants in one container, or does the plant just make different pigments on different blooms?

A diverse array of geraniums, from white to dark red to lavender and everywhere in between.

Here's a special Scott cameo, pictured with my new purple shamrock. He was very patient with me, but you can see the "Can we go now?" in his eyes.

As you can see, it's very jungle-y in some of these greenhouses. I don't know how I'd ever navigate in here. The farm uses its space efficiently, though.

And we end up for today in a neverending field of tomatoes. Who knows how many varieties are in just this shot, let alone the whole building.

What jewels of the plant world have you seen lately? Have you ever been dumbfounded by the sheer volume of plants in a location?

Next post: the last of Strawberry Hill.

Strawberry Hill Farms, Part 1

Over the weekend, Scott and I went to a farm so I could get one plant (on which I will report later). I told him we'd only be there five minutes, but this farm is a huge plant vendor with several warehouses full of fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals. We were there longer than five minutes. I had to wander around and take pictures, of course.

Speaking of which, the camera I'm using now is Scott's, so many thanks are due.

Anyway, people come from all over the state to go to this farm and get plants, so we had to park a good walk away from the cluster of buildings. As we approached them, this was the first thing we saw: discounted cole crops! I think these were marked down to $2 for a four-pack.

I've never seen so many petunias, or in so many colors. There were several rows of tables like this scattered around, covered in petunias. I had to water petunias regularly as a child, and I've never been a fan. They're too sticky for me, and they need to be deadheaded all the time. That said, they are nice to look at.

Here are some tables of salvia and marigolds. I love purple and yellow together, though I don't know if I like how marigolds smell. I'm going to get some next year regardless to put around my tomatoes (assuming I grow tomatoes again next year).

Here's just a section of one of the greenhouses containing ornamental hanging baskets. There was so much to see--I could have spent days wandering around and perusing the selection.

They even have a variety of ferns!

These were the only coleus I saw, but they're nothing to shake a stick at. Sadly I did not have time to sniff all these varieties to find out which were sweet-smelling. Those are my favorites.

Here's a great spider plant. I hope mine gets this full someday.

This begonia looks like a looking-glass begonia, only with polka dots. I don't know what would go well with this plant, but it's impressive on its own.

Now, this is what I came for: a purple shamrock. The species was not denoted on the tags, but I believe these are Oxalis regnelli 'Charmed Wine'. The one I ended up purchasing is on the bottom left. Their leaves are slightly variegated, which is different from the individuals in the greenhouse.

A better shot of the leaves. They look like butterflies in person, too. Some of them were flowering, but people don't cultivate purple shamrocks for their flowers.

All these pictures don't encompass one-fiftieth of the plants at Strawberry Hill. It's truly amazing. Maybe that's why people flock from all over. It was plant overload on my brain, which is why the visit was so fun.

Next post: more views from Strawberry Hill.

Poolside Containers

I finally got ahold of an actual camera! Just in time, too, to capture these fun container arrangements next to the outdoor pool on campus.

The red flowers here are some sort of salvia. Hopefully they grow a bit taller throughout the season, or else this combination will be very short compared to the height of the pot it inhabits. It looks like the purple-leaved plant here will spill out of the container, which will also look better as the summer progresses.

There are a lot of salvia in the greenhouse. I think I like the 'Black and Blue' cultivar more than the red, but it contrasts with the pool nicely.

These sweet flowers balance out the boldness of the salvia, and they do a good job of taking up space.

This cycad-looking plant is the real reason to pay attention to these containers. There was another one, but it's having a lot of trouble. I guess cycads can adapt to temperate regions, but I always think of them as tropical plants. This individual is taking the climate relatively well.

Down the path a ways from those containers were these eye-popping bushes. They are incredibly pink, and there are a lot of them. They would be simply overwhelming were it not for all the green bushes, trees, and mulch around.

Seeing tropical-looking blooms like these herald the approach of summer, so they're welcome in my eyes.

I've never seen a bush so covered with such large flowers before. It's a jaw-dropping effect.

Is my new camera acceptable? It's not as nice as my old one, but I am grateful to have it. I was worried that all of these pictures would be blurry since I'm not used to the camera yet, but it's not hard to operate. Also, what plants have you seen that are screaming, "SUMMER IS COMING"?

Next post: a visit to a farm.

Landscape Services Presents...

Today I bring you a couple of recent developments around campus. Disclaimer: while I may not always love everything that Landscape Services does, I respect them greatly, love a lot of what they do, and am grateful that they make our campus the most beautiful place I've ever inhabited. I sometimes may speculate negatively about the combinations, locations, formations, or types of plants they do or do not use, but speculation is all it is. Now onto the show.

First are some shots of two container plantings I spotted on my way to class (speaking of which, today was my last day of classes!). I am not a fan of the arrangement of these particular planters: their centerpieces are small shrubs of some sort. Their foliage is reminiscent of river birches, to give you a visual. That part of the planting is rather drab. However, below that were pansies and these:

These refreshing daisy-type flowers are fantastic on their own. I really don't know why they aren't the intended centerpiece of the arrangement. Below is another interesting plant in the container, which proves that foliage can, and often does, add a lot of visual interest. Foliage plants just have to be interesting to accomplish this.

Some sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) graced a nearby container. I remember when these took up half a bench in one of the greenhouses at work. The smell was incredible. They're still looking good, even this late in the season.

On another side of campus, I found these flowering bushes. Their thorns would lead me to believe that they are roses, but their flowers are unlike any roses I've ever seen. They're gorgeous, though.

I've had little to report in the past few days, but I swear something big is coming this weekend. After that, though, is finals week, so I probably won't post again until I've moved, and things are settling down. Thanks for bearing with me.

Next post: the next thing I see!

(Belated) Cinco de Mayo Plantings

Happy (late) Cinco de Mayo! Today representatives of the Horticulture Club planted containers at one of the apartment complexes in town. We planted four large containers near the entrance to the pool area, four elevated containers surrounding the pool, and eight small, border-type concrete cutouts along the pool area's walls.

This is one of the larger containers. I planted almost everything in this one. We had a red banana, some celosia 'New Look,' some orange petunias, a couple of marigolds, and some yellow calibrachoa.

These are two of the containers overlooking the pool. It's really hard to see what we planted from this distance, so...

...I'm posting a tags picture!

And here's another shot of the contents of the larger containers. By the time I thought to take pictures, the pool area was locked, so I couldn't photograph the small cutouts.

The greenhouses where we got all these plants (minus the marigolds, which we had leftover from our sale), was amazing. It was huge, and it had half the plants I've ever wanted. It had purple shamrock, Dusty Miller, ferns, all kinds of succulents, all kinds of herbs (including some awesome variegated sage), wandering jews, and we didn't even explore the vegetable greenhouses. I'm planning on going back there next weekend to meander. I'll take pictures while I'm there. It will be a fun time.

How did you celebrate Cinco de Mayo? Have you seen any impressive plant collections lately?

Next post: maybe cave photos this time.

Devil's Icebox and Its Environs

Today I went with some kids from my dorm to Devil's Icebox, which is a cave, and some trails around it. I had a great time, and, naturally, I took a lot of pictures of plants.

First, though, check out this spinach I got. The greenhouse overwintered some of its spinach from last fall, and it began growing again this spring. The spinach soon bolted, though, so I was tasked with pulling it all. Even though it had flowered, the leaves tasted fine, so I was allowed to take home whatever I wanted. I took home a whole bagful, and gave a few plants each to two of my closest friends at school. Here's what I had left after that. It may not look like much, but there's real treasure in there. And lots of aphids and spiders, as it turns out.

Here's another photo unrelated to my cave trip. I saw this on my way to my car this morning and couldn't resist photographing it.

The cave pictured here is not the one we explored, but we did end up crossing this stream. I didn't take many pictures inside the cave because the bottom of it was a river, and I didn't want to drop my phone in it. However, some of my friends took quite a few pictures from in the cave, so I'll post them when I get them.

This plant is a wild Missouri edible, the mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum). These umbrella-like plants will produce apple-esque fruits later this year. The fruits are edible when cooked and can be incorporated in pies, jellies, and so forth. I've never eaten one, but I would like to.

I love mossy cliff faces. This one was quite impressive. The mud made it impossible to clamber over to that tree, though.

There was a plethora of wildflowers blooming at the state park we visited, and I didn't recognize any of them. There's a surprising but substantial difference in the ecologies of my native region and more northern regions of Missouri.

This is Devil's Icebox. This is the cave we explored. We did not, however, enter it this way.

These ornate ferns were all over the place. I quite enjoyed them.

Another unfamiliar wildflower. These blooms resembled snapdragons, except that they weren't in spike formations.

These flowers look like they might belong to the Phlox genus.

Again, I hope to bring you some in-cave pictures. It was a great experience, exploring some of the area's natural wonders. What has nature created in your neck of the woods?

Next post: me in a cave?