Lisa Browder

I have two favorite places for plant shopping: Duncheon’s Nursery (just down the road here in Florida) and Blue Buddha Farm (recent online discovery). Duncheon’s is smaller than the big box nurseries, but it also has more variety in a not-found-everywhere kind of way. There’s a little of everything – flowers, shrubs, ferns, grasses, tall trees, pottery, ceramics, tiles, fountains, garden art, fertilizers, soil, gloves, and even wind chimes. (I’ll get to my Blue Buddha Farm discovery later).

Since I have a backyard with dappled sunlight, I love it that Duncheon’s has a huge selection of shade-loving plants to help me figure out a game plan. Yes, they have all the usual things you’d find elsewhere, but they also have a variety of color, texture and shape that lends a bit of extra interest. I’m not one for a garden full of the same plants you see in every yard on the block, so I like the unusual choices. And I must admit, I kind of enjoy browsing with the company of Basil, the rescue cat (see below). Any business that nurtures both plants and animals is ok by me.

Duncheon’s staff is always within hailing distance and ready to offer suggestions or advice. Not sure what you want, or what to do with it when you get it home? How about a container garden? You pick the planter; they’ll fill it in. Or maybe you have a plant that’s not doing well. Bring in a leaf or a picture and they’ll diagnose the problem and suggest appropriate treatments.

Too bad they don’t sell St. Augustine grass. I might have had a lush green carpet in my backyard by now. As you may recall from my post – “The Grass is Not Always Greener – or Even Green,” my experience with installing grass (by myself) from a couple of years ago was a total fiasco. Initially it looked great, but it seems all those pretty green squares came with chinch bugs and fleas. By the time I finished trying to treat and then reseed, most of the grass was dead. Not a good start to the garden design I dreamed of when I moved here from Las Vegas.

I was so discouraged that I gave up, turned a blind eye to the splotches, and focused on the empty beds along the fence. But what I really hoped was that maybe the bits that survived would somehow spread out on their own and cover all the bald spots in the dirt. I swear that’s exactly what’s happening.

The first three photos below show how pretty things started out before the bugs ruined everything, then the slow browning of that lush green, and finally today’s patchy, but surviving, look.

Back to those empty flower beds.

As it turns out, the critters in the grass weren’t the end of my problems. The lack of sunlight squelched many of my garden dreams as well. I can’t begin to guess how many hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars-worth of flowers I’ve watched wither and die, that despite mulching, fertilizing, spraying, etc. Even the ones that showed promise were dug up by the squirrels.

Then one day, it occurred to me there was a caladium in front of the house, left by the previous owners, that continued to thrive in spite of my lack of care. Already well established, it didn’t have those juicy little baby roots the squirrels seemed to prefer. So what if I planted caladiums in the backyard? I went online to see if a variety of caladiums existed beyond the red ones I typically saw. I discovered Blue Buddha Farm. A small family-owned enterprise, they sell gorgeous, colorful, variegated caladiums. They don’t charge a fortune (great for someone like me who manages to kill everything) and – added bonus – they even send you two of each. It took almost two months for my plants to make an entrance above ground, but then they took off. And I love them.

I was suddenly on a roll. So I decided to tackle the ivy taking over the back wall. I hated it but had been afraid to yank it down. I don’t really know why. What I hoped was that anything I planted would then stand out against the white wall instead of blending into the dark, olive-green ivy. The only problem with that plan was that I couldn’t find a way to get rid of the vine’s suckers and, if you look closely, I’m pretty sure they form a road map from Maine to California.

Ground gardening notwithstanding, I do all right with containers. I’m slowly nurturing a beautiful, eye-catching view of the deck from my porch. I may just end up with that Zen-ish garden I envisioned – containers in the foreground, fascinating shrubs, vines, caldiums and groundcovers in the background. In the meantime, the best thing I can do is plant things and then leave them the hell alone!

• Duncheon’s Nursery
• 2720 Land O’ Lakes Blvd., Land O’ Lakes, Florida
• 813-948-1890
• Tuesday-Friday 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM / Saturday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM / Sunday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM / Closed Mondays
• contact@duncheons.com

• Blue Buddha Farm
• 803-380-3166
• http://www.bluebuddhafarm.com
• Sellers of caladium, amaryllis, iris, canna lily, dahlia and alocasia / colocasia (otherwise known as elephant ears)