Brighter Blooms Nursery, part 1

I was thrilled to be contacted by a representative of Brighter Blooms Nursery with an offer to try some of their products. They mostly offer landscaping items (trees, bushes, perennials, and vines), but it just so happens that I’m planning a huge redo of my front flower bed. Up until now it has graciously served as a spot for “ornamental squash.” That means I grew all my pumpkins, zucchini, and winter squash there. So it was perfect timing, to say the least!

My flower bed is on the north side of my home. So it gets direct sunlight when the sun is very high in the sky, but full shade in the winter. It’s about half and half the rest of the time. I decided to try their Autumn Embers Encore Azalea, as well as a Meyer Lemon Tree. The weather is too cold to actually plant the tree in the ground, but I have a beautifully sunny window in my office where it can be with me all winter, and then I’ll move it onto the little deck just outside when the weather improves.

I received a notice when the plants shipped–they took about 5 days to get to me. They arrived in this big box:

Excited, I opened it up to find these:

Both were securely in the box, and the pots were wrapped in plastic. This kept the soil moist and the dirt contained.

It’s too cold to plant the azalea right now, so I left it in the 3-gallon pot. I potted up the lemon tree in a 5 gallon pot, and put them both by the sunny window in my office. It’s a south-facing bay with a sliding glass door. So the plants get sun from sunup to sundown.

Within a few weeks, look what happened:

Aren’t they beautiful? The lemon tree keeps blooming and blooming, and the smell is DIVINE! Everyone who walks in the room notices and comments on it. They are self-pollinating, but since there are definitely no bees in my office, I took a little cotton ball and helped spread the pollen around. I can already see little baby lemons forming! Two or three leaves have turned yellow and dropped, but from what I’ve read this is a normal part of transitioning to a new place, pot, etc.

The azalea is full of blooms, and they are every bit as beautiful as the pictures on the website! The leaves it came with were dark, and some looked worse for wear. Not a problem, because it has new leaves growing everywhere. I can’t wait for the weather to be warm enough to plant it outside–it will be a plant I enjoy for years to come.

I’ll write more when I get lemons, and once my azalea is in it’s permanent spot. Thanks again to Brighter Blooms Nursery!

Happy gardening!