Yesterday I spent most of the morning running to wholesale nurseries for clients. Yes, I hold a retail plant license. Many of my clients have limited time. Some are working moms. Others are world-travelling executives. Some just don’t drive. You get the picture. They might love trips to the retail nursery, but sometimes it just makes sense for them to have me deliver plants to their door.
Tomorrow I’m coaching a client on putting new plants into her garden. Rather than spend hours and hours shopping with me, she decided to have me buy the plants for her and bring them to our session. This is a great service for her, and its loads of fun for me. As a plant geek, I adore a chance to visit the nurseries and hand-select the best plant options to fit each clients needs — from budget to privacy to anything else.
After I was finished with my client shopping, I took a few minutes to walk thru the nursery to see what fabulous new plants were in stock. And, I was thrilled to find two trees that I’ve been wanting.
One is an Azara microphylla, which is a broadleaf evergreen with tiny, shiny dark green leaves. It grows fairly vertically, becoming wider with age. In the spring it has tiny yellow flower that are very fragrant, especially on warmer days. In the past I just haven’t found ones large enough for my needs. They aren’t super fast grower, so usually my suppliers only have them at about 2-3′ tall, max. My score was a 7′ tall one with beautiful tree-like form. It was a bit beyond the budget of zero I’d planned to spend, but I knew the opportunity to find a nice one at this size wouldn’t be around for long, so I grabbed it up. (See, if you send me to shop for you, you’ll have the benefit of someone who knows a “must-have” buy!)
The second score is a Clerodendrum trichotomum or Harlequin Glorybower. This sweet little tree/large shrub offers beautiful pinkish white flowers with abundant jasmine-esque fragrance in late summer, followed/overlapped by shiny metalic pink and purple fruit. It is a charming tree when doing its thing, but it is fairly ugly when dormant. It will go in a blended border to help hide its uglier side. I’ll share a photo of this beauty later.
