Saturdays With Alison

You may remember my post last week about Alison's (Bonnie Lassie) garden and the week before that Alison and I met  at the Bloedel Reserve Sale and visited another nursery together.  We also spent this past Saturday together going on a road trip to Portland.  It's been a wonderful month of Saturdays with Alison.  The next three posts will each show one of the places we visited after touring Alison's garden on April 13.  First, we went to a nursery that I'd visited a couple of times but was new to Alison, Furney's Nursery in Des Moines.  Greeting us at the main entrance was a display of favorite plants of various folks affiliated with the nursery in some way.  The sexy variegated leaves and bi colored flowers of Rhododendron 'President Roosavelt' caught Alison's fancy and it found it's way into the car!

 

This gazebo would look great in her garden and could have plastc clipped to it in the winter making it do double duty as a greenhouse for some more tender plants.

Does this guy look familliar? 

He looks a lot like this one in my bamboo grove.

 

This gal looks like a lot of fun!  Her, um, shelf could be used as a receptacle for bird seed.

 

 

All kinds of concrete whimsey. 

This one is popping up in lots of nurseries lately & I think she's lovely. 

 

Admirals Whiskers and Sparky would look great in someone's library, drawing room or garden.

 

This kalanchoe whose name I've forgotten is the largest of its kind I've seen.  Really, huge.  The tiny growth at the bottom is the size of the full grown plants I've had in the past.  I was sorely tempted by this gorgeous thing but decided not to get it.  If it's still there in a month or two when I get back to the nursery, I may rethink my decision.

 

Yucca baccata was looking handsome.

Abies pinsapo 'Glauca' putting on a a show.

 

A well shaped mature acer palmatum provides year round interest.

Blue buds of Ceanothus cleverly paired with a gold variegated euonymus.  Blue and gold are such a fabulous combination and the contrast in leaf shape, size, and color of this pair is also quite nice.

Berberis come in such a variety of sizes, shapes and colors that there's one for just about any situation.  Too bad they're not evergreen as well. 

The evergreen foliage of the lowly PJM Rhododendron turns a beautiful deep wine shade in the winter.  New foliage emerges a beautifully contrasting chartreuse - gorgeous.  Oh, they bloom sometime too but who cares?

 

This gorgeous vision is scolding me for not taking any pictures of the wide variety of perennials that we also perused.  Both Alison and I came away with a few lovelies but I forgot to take a picture of them.  Artemisa 'Powis Castle', a bee balm, I think I also got a couple more Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' which has become my new favorite Euphorbia.

 

We left  the nursery, treasures in tow to pick up Nigel, Alison's husband, and find a place to eat lunch.  Fortunately, Windmill Nursery, just down the hill from Alison's place, has a nice cafe...