Quick shout-out to The Growing Place in Naperville.
• it’s lovely to walk around in
• it has really nice garden gift items and plenty of pots, etc.
• it has lots of fun areas for little kids (wish I’d known about this nursery when my kids were small) — even a sand pit!
• it has little learning gardens where you can see various plants as they’d actually look in the garden, very helpful — I lust after their pond and bog garden
• and my favorite bit, and what gets me to drive 30 minutes, is that as you walk down the rows of perennials, they have little pop-up tags that say Native on all the natives, making it really easy to identify them — they have a pretty good selection, although some have started selling out, so go soon if you’re going…
• bonus, they have a bunch of natives available as $5 plugs — start with those to keep your budget in check, assuming you are patient enough to wait an extra year for them to grow to size
