First shopping trip of the year

With a longer stretch of warmer weather, it finally feels like we may have seen the end of winter.  I have been waking the plants up, and continuing the pot re-shuffle; those in the green house get moved outside and those in the house moved into the green house.

The only thing missing was a plant related trip. On Sunday that was corrected with a trip to one the rare plant fairs. The fairs are never great for succulents, you need the cactus marts for those, but there is usually something there that I can see working in a dry bed. This time I also had the luxury of knowing the new garden will have more to it than just a dry bed. 

I was very good and only got a few plants, first up was ipheion alberto castillo. I am planning several gravel areas through the garden and want to ensure there are flowering plants to bring colour at this time of year.

The second plant from the fair was another eremurus. The one I had planted in the dry bed has done really well, so I was looking for others. The thing about plant fairs is there is often only a few of each plant available, so I was sad when someone literally picked up two pots just as I was reaching over for them.  At least there was another variety this time eremurus robustus, as soon as I saw the size of the initial growth I had to buy it.

Speaking to the stall holder they confirmed the trick is to plant them in well drained soil and ensure they are not crowded by other plants. I guess this explains why they did well in my dry bed and other people have struggled with them.

I'll have to do another post on the other two plants from the fair, as I haven't got photos yet. Moving on, getting to the fair meant driving past Wisley, which just happens to have a great nursery. Their alpine collections have been really good lately, so I thought I would just pop in for a quick look.  straight away they had some trough planters and so one of those went in the trolley, which then required a few plants to put in it.

I'm not sure about the dwarf iris, but there are plenty of places it can go if it doesn't work.  Plus a few spares to take its place.

How restrained was that for the first day of shopping.  I doubt it will continue though as this weekend is the first cactus mart of the year!