Bon bons for planting, versus eating one-by-one while reading a romance novel.
There are lots of really awful things you can buy for a gardener. That includes large cans of "Wildflower Mix" of dubious provenance, ceramic rain gauges in the shape of a toad in a Victorian waistcoat, a cheap umbrella with a sunflower on the crown, and candles or bath salts that purport to be natural and botanical, yet come in colors never found in nature. Most gardeners I know prefer durable tools, great books, or even those cards studded with seeds that you can plant. Here are some other ideas, if you're shopping for a person who gardens, or if you are looking for stuff to put on your own list:
- The Missouri Botanical Garden's Garden Gate Shop has always been a good place to find unusual plants, including orchids. But if you need something that travels (and wraps) well, a carton of Moss Milkshake is quirky, kind of fun, and not pricey (you just mix it with water and paint it where you want moss to grow in your yard). The GGS also has a great book section, including titles from local writers like Herbal Cookery From the Kitchens and Gardens of the St. Louis Herb Society and the brand new Shaw Nature Reserve: 85 Years of Natural Wonders. I'm sure no one would complain about having their tution paid for a class at the Botanical Garden, either. While you're in the neighborhood, it's worth a stop to The Bug Store a littie further down on Shaw, because your MoBot membership will get you a discount there.
- Bowood Farms carries several "winter white blooms," including azalea trees, white cyclamen, white white rosebud kalanchoes, white butterfly orchids, amaryllis and paperwhites. They will also compost your poinsettas for you after the holidays are over.
- For a hard-core organic or hydroponic gardener, consider a gift certificate to Worm's Way in Creve Coeur. It would also be very, very hard to find a gardener who would not weep for joy after unwrapping indestructable WOLF-Garten hand tools from HomeEco on Macklind.
- A membership to Gateway Greening supports a local gardening nonprofit and also qualifies the member to attend certain plant sales, including GG's annual perennial divide.
- If you think dishpan hands are the worst, you should see weeding hands, or double-digging hands, sheesh. Cheryl's Herbs in Maplewood makes its own eco-friendly, plant-based hair and skin care lines. The Frankincense and Myrrh hand lotion is excellent. They also have a wide range of balms, including some for sore muscles, and an all-purpose skin tonic.
- For those who don't have time to drive around, there's an abundance of interesting stuff online, too. Terrain (literally the Urban Outfitters of gardening), sells super pricey garden tools, lots of geegaws, and some great bulbs, including this amaryllis. This papillon amaryllis stuck out on Etsy; also this vanilla-bean-producing orchid. Seed bombs have gone from anarchist to ubiquitous, so now you can get them packaged like a box of candy, or a burlap sack of coal.
- And finally, a few great books I tore through this year, some old, some not, that I feel I can recommend for people who love nature and gardens: Richard Mabey's Weeds; Andrea Wulf's Founding Gardners; Jonathan Bate's biography of 19th-century poet and naturalist John Clare; the Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs; Ronald Johnson's The Shrubberies; and the reprint of the 1864 classic, Ten Acres is Enough.
