Happy springtime, dear friends! It is wonderful to see early budding trees here in North Texas blossoming after the super cold of this winter ~ the fruitless pears are just putting on their magnificent canopies of white, the redbuds are beginning their blooms, too…
And today I’m sharing a nursery visit to a place I KNOW I will go back to… As I went up for my first Covid-19 vaccination, I chose the Chickasaw Nation’s healthcare site in Ardmore, Oklahoma as much for the vaccine but also for a little road trip (because I need to get out!) and to see if I could find some interesting garden centers. 🙂
Mr. Ethereal went with me taking the day off and after an hour+ getting the vaccine and waiting to see if I had any reaction (I didn’t then but did end up with all the usual things the emails said you will get: headaches, body aches, tired and sleeping a lot, sore arm, some swelling there, and after three days I feel pretty well back to normal. Well after a lunch at the local Carl’s Jr. (to get a burger which feels like “home” in California), we went on “an adventure!”
We found Marcum’s Nursery in Ardmore, Oklahoma…
Their website is cute and even has a fun jingle at the bottom of the home page, if you head over to check it out. I highly recommend the Ardmore location! It reminds me of California even with the dry grasses, pine trees and just wide open prairie spaces (more in Northern California in the foothills of my teenage years).
There hasn’t been as much rain this winter so the grasses aren’t as green as I’d seen last year in late spring, but the plants at the garden center more than made up for the lack of green along the freeway! I liked that the plants available at Marcum’s are different than what I have found at our local garden centers here in Denton County, Texas. 🙂
And that’s exactly what I was looking for!
As you come up to park, this Easter Island character was the first thing I spied and he made me laugh! Ever seen Night at the Museum? Watch it if you haven’t.
I won’t spoil the fun!
Just as you turn left from the main roadway into the property, there is a stand of set-in fruit and other trees. They are “set in,” if you’ve never seen this before (which I haven’t but it makes sense) to protect the tree roots from freezing to death during the negative temperatures Oklahoma prairies can experience ~ like this crazy year with the Arctic winds we had brought Oklahoma’s temps down to -16 or so.
So nurseries obviously want to protect their investments and then they are easy to dig up when it’s time to sell the trees to customers. Works for summer watering, too, as I think I spy irrigation drip hoses. 🙂
I loved seeing all the crocks and pots right out front! There were soooo many to look at and I could have spent a fortune… I did bring one home which had two prices on it: $20 and $39.95. It was only $20!
I forgot to ask the price of the long rectangular terracotta trough with the swags on the sides, but no matter. I go back in less than 21 days for Round 2 of the vaccine! Maybe I can stop back by… 😉
Seriously, though, Marcum’s has a nice selection which is different than what is available here in Texas. I am missing what we had available in California and my thought was to look somewhere different for better pottery. Nice place and good finds! I’d think you’d enjoy stopping by on a roadtrip up HW 35 North (eventually HW 29 further north) on your way to or from the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, or up from Texas.
Marcum’s had a few cement tables and benches with separate feet for the garden. They also had iron trellises and plant stands…
I stayed within my $200 budget (the plant stand was $55, I think, and the Otsuma orange tree was $65), and have a good selection of plants to put out to replace some that didn’t make it with the extreme snows, the cold and ice storms.
Can you guess the two tall plants? They are wonderfully scented when brushed up against! I think the squirrels will be lovingly sporting a new scent this spring… citronella. These are cintronella and should self-seed.
I also brought home another sweet heuchera, that can just be seen at the very back behind the plant stand. I picked up a couple of other bulb plants and I’ll share them later.
Well that’s it for today’s visit! I hope you’ve enjoyed this delightful garden center tour at the Ardmore location of Marcum’s Nursery. They have four locations including one up in Oklahoma City (another 1 1/2 hours north).
I’m sorry I didn’t get any pictures inside the store or the greenhouse (it was HOT inside!) but that’s where all these plants were found. I was too busy looking around. 😉 You can see inside the greenhouse on their website here.
Happy gardening, friends!
Barb
