PPA – Day 2

Above is Tony Avent, founder and owner of Plant Delights Nursery (PDN) in Raleigh, NC.  RBG has been a customer of PDN for over 20 years and I’ve always wanted to see the nursery.  Well, I enjoyed a visit this evening but more on that later.  The second day of the Perennial Plant Association (PPA) Annual Conference was filled with all sorts of great presentations, networking, a trade show and much more.  I continue to see people I know and make new acquaintances very quickly with this fun group!  The keynote speaker today was Fergus Garrett from Great Dixter (UK).  He did a great presentation and his wonderful images and commentary took me back to the month I stayed at Great Dixter and worked with Fergus and the crew a couple years ago.  I was able to catch Fergus and catch up which was nice (including a man hug)!  The new plant forum was exciting and I took plenty of notes on new perennials to look for next year and toured the trade show.  Ron Gagliardo, Senior Manager of Horticultural Services for Amazon, did a great presentation on the the Spheres that opened in Seattle, WA this past January.  Look these up on the internet as they are super cool and combine meeting space with greenery in an amazingly engineered set of structures that also feature thousands of plants.  Totally cool.  The highlight was the dinner (quickly consumed) and tour of Plant Delights Nursery.  Rain cut the visit short unfortunately but I was able to get through and take MANY photos and see some super cool stuff.  While most of the offerings at PDN are not hardy for us, seeing such a wide range of plants (18,000 different plants over 6 acres in their Juniper Level Botanic Gardens) was amazing. I’m sure I didn’t see everything but sure tried before I was drenched through.  All of the photos here are from PDN this evening.