Late season visit to The Farmer's Daughter

If you know me, you know that I yell from the mountain tops my love for The Farmer's Daughter in South County, Rhode Island. I dare say they are the best (hands down) garden center in the state in my book. Rhode Island Monthly has awarded them that award themselves. I love their creativity with displays, the quality of their plant stock and the variety of plant stock. Oh, this garden center is delightful.

A huge urn full of foliage plants...please note there are no flowers blooming in this pot, and it is still dynamic! They used cabbages, kales, and potato vine. This thing was about as tall as I am.

I love how they used the succulents in this shallow container. So cool! Most of these aren't hardy for a New England winter, but they can be brought inside near a very bright window.

I was down there about a week ago picking up some fall annuals for a garden club lecture I was doing on autumnal interest in the landscape.
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Here is the basic fake layout of the container I was going to make for them. I had that upright brown colored plant (which I can't find the tag for and the name is totally escaping me at the moment), Swiss Chard 'Bright Lights', Artemisia absinthium (this is a perennial), Ornamental hot peppers, yellow and green variegated culinary sage, and last but not least - purple asters. I have a personal boycott on mums for fall annuals because I find them insanely overused and therefore, boring.

Their perennials and trees are packing up for the season, but they still had some killer displays. What struck me about the displays I saw was they were loaded with edible plants. The shift in gardening, especially in this recession, has been to people growing their own food. A lot of people will express their desire to grow their own food but have limited space in their yards for both ornamental plantings and functional vegetable, fruit, or herb gardens. I have always thought, why not have both. Both can be stunning if planned correctly.

These photos below are primarily edible leaf veggies, culinary herbs like sage and thyme and some flowering annuals. But it is fantastic nonetheless.

This photo below is near the tool shed and they used mums, big edible cabbages, rosemary, and parsely...and it was beautful! My iphone didn't really catch the wow factor of this bed as it comes across in real life.