vivero

After a great lunch at Jack Allen’s past the “Y” in Oak Hill, Jenny of Rock Rose, Pam of Digging, and Jenny of J Peterson Garden Design and I ventured over to visit our friend Kathy Cain at Vivero Growers Nursery. A few miles past the “Y” on Hwy. 290, Vivero is a plant lovers delight.

As part of Support your Independent Garden Center month, several Austin bloggers are posting about local nurseries every Wednesday in October. Today is also the last day that eight Austin bloggers, including me, are offering 8 exciting giveaways as part of this effort. Visit my previous post here to enter for a chance to win great prizes from participating nurseries.

Today I’m highlighting Vivero as my idependent nursery of the week. Kathy and her husband Mike run Vivero Growers Nursery. They sell retail and wholesale to the trade and, unlike some nurseries, they also grow much of their own stock.

The nursery is filled with little vignettes of plantings, pairing just the right things with each other for color, texture, contrast, size and overall WOW factor. This planter by the office door is a perfect example.

They had not one, but two different varieties of one of my favorite plants in stock — Leonotis leonurus, or Lion’s Tail. The beautiful plants grow tall stalks with bright orange blooms at intervals up the stalk. The almost-round blooms look remarkably like the tuft of fur at the end of a lion’s tail, hence the name. I posted about mine about 3 posts back here, if you want to see one close up.
All the plants were healthy specimens, clearly well-cared for. Everywhere I turned there was a sea of color.
Around every corner, I found some plant treasure — many new varieties of plants that I’d never seen before like salmon-colored salvias and pink and white Mexican bush sages. From trees to perennials to annuals and succulents, Vivero is one of my favorite local nurseries.

Click back to my previous post here to enter for a chance to win in the Support your independent nursery month giveaways. Contest ends at 11:59 tonight!