I love our yearly trip to Joy Creek and its neighbour down the road, Cistus Nursery. Because if you are still slogging through all these garden tours, you are probably also a plant nut, here are scenes from three years of spring shopping trips. I do remember one glorious year that I was there more than once, and once I even got to take a design workshop there with Lucy Hardiman and Ann Lovejoy. The Joy Creek schedule of classes would be well worth attending every single spring-autumn weekend were it not for the fact that we live two hours way.
3 May 2010

Agave with the house in background; Oddly I have never taken much to Agave...but it looks wonderful here.
Joy Creek is very big on using quarter-ten washed gravel in the garden beds.
Just Google “Joy Creek gravel” and you will find plenty of information.
They even use it under their small lawn near the house. If you poke your finger at the grass roots you can feel the gravel base which helps the lawn hold up beautifully to lots of foot traffic.
Dianthus
27 April 2011

Many plants are tagged; if not, you can show the photo on your phone or camera to the helpful staff to get the ID
I was completely smitten with this tree that was sitting on the sold table. Around and around the table I walked taking photos of the tree. Took photo of tag on tree: Crataegus Laevigata Contorta …contorted ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ Hawthorn. Turned out it was the only one…and had been sold to Kathy, one of the nursery workers (or Katie, I wrote it down..somewhere). So she let me buy it, because she can get the next one that comes in. I have Googled it and find the uncontorted version gets to 20′, but this tag says 6′. Wondering if that is true. We planted it in our front garden, and as it went in the ground I heard the trunk make an ominous crack. But although it was shocky for awhile, it came through winter of 2011-12 and is leafing out nicely in spring 2012.
12 April 2012
Never have we gone on our spring road trip this early….but I had a nagging desire to shop for the coolest plants ever since having found out a couple of weeks before that our garden had been selected as one of the tour gardens for the Music in the Gardens tour for 2012. And because we were selected as Ilwaco’s business of the year for 2010….but the ceremony was in autumn of 2011….it seems one of our duties is to be grand marshalls of the early May Loyalty Day parade in Ilwaco. (This is ironic because I often grumbled in the past about the McCarthy-esque origins of Loyalty Day, and being a non-patriot who’s fond of the world and who does not like nationalism….well, I could go on, but it might sound unappreciative of the honour, and I do believe it is an honour.) Along with that, we have to make Long Beach perfect for its parade day (Ilwaco is Saturday, Long Beach is Sunday) and that’s a longwinded way of explaining why we went to Joy Creek so early, before more tender plants were on offer.
The sales area had some wonderful rebar trellises including this fan shaped one. As some of my friends know, my former co-gardener made exceptional rebar garden art. I wish I had taken up on his offer to teach me to weld with his oxygen and acetylene (??) torch but I was kinda scared of it. Kaboom!
A ceramic artist had made birdbaths so beautifully mounted on little tree trunk poles. I had to have the fish one. Because we are going to be on the garden tour and need beautiful objects to keep up with all those fancy gardens I’ve toured in the cities.
She had also made clever birdhouses with the holes sized, we were told, just right for the birds.
I resisted the birdhouses because I had not resisted pretty much any plant that caught my fancy….again with the garden tour excuse. And our next stop at Cistus would assuredly provide more plant temptations.
You did not have to have a fish birdbath so beautifully mounted on a little tree trunk pole because you are going to be on the garden tour and need beautiful objects to keep up with all those fancy gardens you’ve toured in the cities. Because you are already up to those fancy gardens, but if want to indulge in a little frosting for your beautiful cake of a garden, I think you should without remorse or justification, my friend 🙂
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One of the things I’ve missed about our Joy Creek/Cistus trip for the last couple of years is that the day has been chosen so spontaneously that we haven’t had time to arrange to meet you there. Thanks for the kind words!! Some of those gardens we’ve toured were mighty fancy with their urns ‘n’such.
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[…] Comments « flashback: 2010-2012 – Joy Creek Nursery […]
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[…] for me to get to see the joys of early summer at these nurseries as we usually visit around the first days of May. What a difference seven weeks makes! gravel path approaching the lawn the little lawn lushness a […]
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Urns do not a garden make…email or call me before a spontaneous trip as I can occasionally get away on short notice…it takes 1.5 – 2.0 hours to get there, depending on traffic.
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Never even thought of that!! We left at eleven am….decided to go at ten fifteen…
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[…] for our various clients, and nothing is more satisfying than that. [Two years later I wrote two flashbacks about that that buying […]
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