The Natural Gardener Visit

30th August, 2010 - Posted by katherine - 2 Comments

pepper plants

Over the weekend I was able to visit the Natural Gardener, a garden center on Old Bee Caves Road in southwest Austin. I’d never been before, and it was so cool. Even if you’re not into gardening, it’s fun to stop by and see what they have because it’s such a big, interesting place. It’s set up with a lot of nature paths that lead to you different types of gardens, and the plants in various gardens are labeled so if you see something you like, you can find the same thing in the nursery. It has a large working vegetable garden that’s fun to check out, a small field with all sorts of different types of fruit trees, a green house, and pens with chickens, goats, and donkeys (and much more). I didn’t realize that the owner of the Natural Garden is also the owner of Lady Bug brand gardening products, an all organic line of soils, fertilizers, mulches, and composts – I have been using their turkey compost on my garden for several months while I wait for my own compost to be ready to use, and I think it’s helped my plants do well. The center has all different types of natural soil additives (interesting things like worm casings) that I had read about from this book, but didn’t know where to find. My husband and I ended up buying some garden soil – it’s a lot cheaper to buy it at the Natural Gardener if you bag it yourself than buying bags at Home Depot or Lowes, and they sell reusable bags so we can go back and use them again when we pick up compost or mulch, etc. I highly recommend checking it out!