More Nurseries

The Friends Nursery at the Geelong Botanic Gardens opens on Wednesday mornings. We were looking for a particular plant, but it turns out that they had a big autumn sale a week or two ago, and stocks of everything were low or gone. They had none left of the plant we had gone to buy.

I bought these instead:

Two hippeastrums of unknown variety. This morning over breakfast I was reading some blogs, including this post at NeedledMom, featuring some amazing hippeastrums in flower (called amaryllis in the US).  Many years ago I had some I bought at a garage sale in Coburg, but I don't know what happened to them in the end. I've been wanting a replacement for a while. Now I just need to work out the best way to care for them here. They might be candidates for living in the outdoor living area in winter to protect them from frost.

We met a family member and had lunch at the kiosk in the gardens, then on our trip home we stopped off at Roraima Nursery in Lara. The gardens there are fascinating, with all sorts of rusty bits and pieces used as planters or as sculptural decoration.

I like this ball of augur bits hanging in a peppercorn tree:

And the combination of plants in this rusted-through box:

Lime green and pinky-grey:

Just gorgeous!

These ball-shaped succulents are beautiful:

Agave victoriae-reginae. The nursery had tiny ones for sale for $15 and $20 dollars, so I have no idea what this massed display of basket-ball sized ones would cost to emulate. Nice to look at, anyway!

I think that might be enough nurseries for a while. It must be time to just do some work in our own garden.