We spent the good part of a day at Katsura Gardens in Carver, MA. With some traffic on Saturday trip took only 1hr15 minutes; today with no traffic only an hour.

After I've seen a nursery like this I have to wonder why I'd ever buy trees at a conventional nursery, whether an Independent Garden Center or Big Box.

They have so many varieties of each type of plant...maybe 3 different Korean Pines; a dozen different spruces; they carry at least 10 different magnolias, including 4 different yellow ones. I bet there are a half dozen different white pines.

How many different oakleaf hydrangea? Sumacs, bearberry, grasses, caryopteris nothing is heat stressed even though we know what a terrible summer it has been. That's not really correct. Every varigated dogwood was frizzled at the edges. Here at home they all look like well cooked bacon.

Everything in the nursery is 25% off, except the pristine fall perennials.

All the stock from last year is 50% off. I got a 10 foot katsura for 185 that was 370.

The help is knowledgable, answered my 100 questions and answered again when I forgot and acted like they had all the time in the world.

The drawback? You may think you can put that little 4 footer in your minivan...but you'll soon wish you had a truck. Their delivery to Lexington is 200. I wish we'd done that instead of having to make two trips in a small pickup..and the struggle to even get the big boys out of the truck and up the small hill.

Here's what we purchased yesterday: sorry too tired and can't remember latin names right now

Siberian Spruce--wonderful dangley cones up and down

Cedar "green Giant"

Korean pine "silveray"

A really obnoxious tree crew my neighbor hired cut down a couple of low branching maples on my property recently and I lost a lot of privacy and worse, some screening from his ugly shed.

I'm over being upset and enjoying the opportunity to experiment with otehr plants.

Anyway a great, great day at a wonderful nursery. I hope you will go.

Marie