A Plant Haul! 🌷🌱

Last Saturday we went to the absolute cutest little outlet plant nursery.

Since last autumn I’ve been mentally planning my garden—how I was going to design it, what kinds of plants I wanted, romanticizing the idea of sitting out on my porch in the early mornings with a book in my hands and a nice hot cup of chai tea on our little garden table—and now that the warmer months have finally rolled in it was time to get started at last!

We planned to make a whole day of it, right down to picking just the right outfit. I wanted to look like a woodland forager, emerging from my pastel cottage to venture into the bustling city for new little friends to add to the garden. I ended up choosing my wicker hat, my Hobbit dress from Her Universe , and a pair of my cute pink converse shoes (for ease of walking). A week later and I’m still in love with the way the outfit came together!

Where would a forest forager be without an equally magical drink to fuel their day outside the woods? I don’t want to know! So we stopped at Sonic and ordered a Unicorn Dreams Slush before we were well and truly on our way to the nursery. I love this drink! It’s really sweet but not too sweet, and it looks so cute! I’m not sure what the little blue boba is filled with (blue raspberry something, I think?) but it’s the only kind of boba that I’ve been able to find so far that I really like. Trust me—this drink is deeee-lish!

Before we continue on, I want to talk about this nursery a little bit.

There’s not a lot of family-owned businesses where I lived. They exist, for sure, but they tend to get gobbled up by bigger corporations pretty quickly. There’s certainly very few who, like Plant Kingdom Greenhouse (where we went), have been owned and operated by the same family for 5 generations. The plants that they sell are all native to where we live and have all been grown here as well. No being shipped in on a truck, no trauma from being lugged about in shipping crates. This was actually one of the biggest reasons I wanted to support them—whenever I can, I love to support small businesses. There’s nowhere near enough of them anymore, especially not like this place.

Also there was supposedly a greenhouse cat, but we didn’t see it. Hopefully next time!

We were completely enraptured by the huge number of plants they had to offer, and how absolutely vibrant they all were. Everything was a huge eruption of color, and there were so many different kinds that we didn’t even know about. You could really tell that a lot of love and care went into growing and maintaining them. They had this pepper plant that we didn’t get this time but plan to get next time called Midnight Fire. The whole thing was black, and the only reason we knew it was a pepper plant was because some of the ones next to where we were looking already had pepper-shaped appendages coming out of it. Danny saw it and decided right then and there that he wanted to try and cook with it. I love spicy food, so I’m fully up for the challenge!

Finished with looking at the plants on the outside of the greenhouse, we ventured inside. It was jam packed with huge, leafy plants and the sort of earthy smell that made Danny and I both think of the rainforest exhibit at the zoo. They had birds flying overhead and roosting in the plants that were much large enough for birds to sit comfortably in. There was so much of the greenhouse that we didn’t get to see on this visit, but we knew right away that this was going to be our go-to place for all our plants from here on out!

Look at this fountain! Isn’t that such a nice, unnecessary-yet-effective touch?

Now it’s on to the haul!

I tried to only get perennials with this one. Perennials come back year after year and many self-sow, and that’s an important factor (to me anyway) in gardening right now because I’m trying to fill our backyard on as much of a budget as possible. I want nature to be able to do its thing while helping me make the cottage garden of my dreams 💜

I’m going to be transparent here: Not everything came from the nursery. Two of these things came from Stutzmans when I went there with my mom later in the day. I’ll tell you which ones those are when we get there!

First up is the lovely……

^ . . . Foxglove!

I absolutely adore foxgloves. I think once they get going and start to get really tall, they’re one of the most beautiful plants. This one is just a little tiny baby right now, but hopefully soon it will grow!

Did you know that foxgloves are self-sowing? That’s right! They’ll spread their seeds as they grow so year after year we can get more foxgloves! I can’t wait to get a ton of them going!

This one is a Delphinium—and like the foxgloves, they are self-sowing and perennials! I absolutely love the blue-purple coloring on this one! It looks so fairy!

This one is a Victoria Blue, and like the first two is a perennial and self-sowing. This one, the delphinium, and the foxglove are going to be the plants we keep in the back of the flowerbed to help with layering. Cottage gardens are just chock full of that kind of thing!

These first three are cared for in much the same way—water, full-sun, leave them alone to do their thing.

This is one of the ones that came from Stutzmans, and they’re black-eyed susans! Now, there’s several different variations of black-eyed susans, and the ones I got are the Rudbeckia fulgida variety. They’re supposed to get 2-3ft tall and attract butterflies! We love butterflies here in the Hollow!

These shasta daisies were one of the flowers I was hoping most to find! This one did come from Plant Kingdom (the nursery) and I was absolutely over the moon when I found them! They’re so beautiful and absolutely perfect. They’re supposed to bloom all through October, so they’ll be a fun little visitor during my birthday month!

I think these are perennials too, so when winter comes and they die out they’ll just come back in even more abundance next year!

These are another purchase from Stutzmans and honestly . . . I have no idea what they are! I really just bought them because the petals on the left look like candy canes, and the leaves in the center have an insane pattern! I’m pretty sure these are annuals, whatever they are, so after this year they’ll be done. Still—they sure are pretty!

This last purchase isn’t a flower (and did come from Plant Kingdom) but a pair of tomato plants!

I have this (probably overly) romanticized idea that I want to try and grow our own food to some degree. It’ll never get to “homesteader” level because I’m just not that good of a gardener (yet!) but a couple vegetables here and there are enough to feel like I am! Honestly, it would be really cool to get good enough at gardening to actually be able to grow our own vegetables for our table. Maybe that should be my next goal!

That’s it for my plant haul, you guys!

I’m so happy we finally got our garden started 💜. It’s going to be so much fun from here on out seeing how well I can do nurturing my little haven and getting it to grow. I’m done with school from now until August, so I think this will probably be my main summer project! I can’t wait to show you guys all my updates from the garden!

Do you have any plants you’re particularly excited about? I want to know all about them in the comments!

Until next time!