This weekend was the annual
Bloom 'N Garden Expo at the Williamson County Agricultural Center. You can bet that when there are plants and me in the same location I'll end up coming home with something! When going to these festivals I make two rules for myself with purchases. One, the purchase has to be something I don't have and two, the purchase needs to be really cool (something I can't get locally)! OK nothing profound there in my two rules but rules none the less! I purchased three things that I think followed my rules pretty well.
The first two items were plants.
I'm a big fan of heucheras (so much so that I grew
some from seed this year) and when I saw Heuchera 'Mystic Angel' I knew I wanted it for the garden. Its veining pattern is really cool and the silvery foliage will look great underneath one of our Japanese maples. I can't wait to divide a few new plants off of our new 'Mystic Angel' to fill out that area.
The second plant was a sedum called 'Purple Form' (
Sedum hispanicum minus). Its foliage is soft to the touch and grows into a little mound. It's now in the
sedum garden. I moved an 'Autumn Joy' sedum to the center of the bed so that it wouldn't cover up the new arrival.
The last item was mainly purchased as a functional element but it does look pretty neat. It's a cast iron hose holder! Last year I just left the hose lying on the ground which wasn't the most attractive thing in the world. It has an 8 inch spike on the bottom that pushes into the ground to hold itself up. This should do a good job of getting the hose up and out of the way.
I like to go to these shows mainly to see ideas about what we can do in our landscape. I saw some interesting ideas like the green roof bird house and a really cool circular pergola along with many other interesting things. The circular pergola is beyond my means but I may make an attempt at a green roof bird house. It would be a good practice run for my shed if I ever get that project going!
