Garden Solutions

 I told you there would be more gardens. Did you expect one so soon? I found where the demonstration rock garden is at the nursery where they develop the SunSparkler hybrid sedums. The name of the company is Garden Solutions. And they've lableled the space in case you weren't sure what it was. (This kind of thing always cracks me up.)

I'm just going to show you several long shots of the gardens today. Of course I took many pictures of individual plants, but I'm loving how these are giving such a good idea of the kind of landscape you can create with a rock garden.

Rock gardens can vary from places like this where they brought in big rocks, and so they can even use shrubs and small trees and it won't overwhelm the rocks, to rocks with tiny nooks where the plants are "micro." The rock garden at Matthaei Botanical Garden in Ann Arbor is of that type. (I have some pictures of it, but not with me) Mine is somewhere in between. Shrubs would overwhelm mine. In fact, now that I'm finding more varieties of sedums, I'm liking the 14" high mounds of geraniums less and less. But they can be thinned and removed gradually as I get more of the plants I like better.

The emphasis of this garden is to create a visual treat by varying foliage color and texture. That is also my goal, so I got a lot of nice ideas. I actually have (and/or have killed) an awful lot of the same plants, not counting shrubs) that they have used.

Of course, most of these plants do have interesting flowers at various times of the season. Those are just like frosting on the cake. But you can easily see that the color palette includes yellow, green, deep red, purple, blue-purple, and variegated leaves. They have plants that are spiky, fuzzy, bumpy, mounded, sprawling, etc.

I saw several plants that I have no idea what they are. Some were labeled, others I'll have to sleuth out. And of course, I covet several. It would just be too much for today, but maybe another day, later, I'll show you some individual plants.

So this is in Hudsonville, on Port Sheldon Street. It's a wholesale nursery company, so there is no one to answer questions and nowhere there to buy plants. But the gardens are open, right in front, for people to wander through.

I met up with friend David Snoek for lunch, and finally got to meet his wife Carol! Then we toured the garden in the rain. Actually the rain made the colors of the plants look very nice. Sometimes sunlight washes out the colors in pictures.

Now I'm in Ann Arbor for the night. Pretty beat, since I had a lot of final things to do before I left home this morning. Lots of heavy rain on the drive. It let up just so we could visit the garden! What a quality day!

See SunSparkler Sedums