Plant Lover's Mecca Far Reaches Farm Launches Mail Order & Partners with Plant Talk

Well, partnership may be putting it too strongly, but advertiser doesn't adequately describe this new relationship between Plant Talk and a few, special businesses - like Far Reaches Farm whose new ad posts for the first time today. I really appreciate their support to keep the blog going....and I love the fact that Far Reaches is now offering mail order to eager plant connoisseurs all over the country.

Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote last year in Pacific Northwest mag;  "The story of Far Reaches Farm is about more than hard work and hip plants. At heart it's a romance. Dodson and Milliken met and fell in love on a seed-collecting expedition to China. Both gave up their previous lives and nurseries, and Milliken moved from Vermont to join Dodson on the West Coast. Eight years ago the pair founded Far Reaches Farm and have been hard at work ever since building gardens and a nursery with the largest variety of taxa of any in the state." (read the full story here)

And now, even though I can't think of a more delightful outing, you no longer need to hop the ferry to Port Townsend to salivate over Kelly and Sue's amazing collection of covetable plants. At your fingertips online, then delivered to your door, are not-to-be-found-elsewhere crocosmia, like this C. 'His Majesty' which has the largest blooms of any of the 100 different varieties of crocosmia at Far Reaches. Is it the orange shading, the size of the flower, or the intensity of the sky that's so heart-stopping? Doesn't matter, it's a scene I'd like to replicate in my own garden, as soon as possible please...

And who would ever expect such an exotic looking creature to be hardy? But this weirdly beautiful Chinese May Apple survives to zone 5. An iconic plant for shade gardens, it matures into a 20"-30" herbaceous rounded dome of multiple stems with quite a few of these big flowers. The combination of huge, darkly variegated leaves and fluffy pink flowers is pretty outrageous. Kelly and Sue  collected seed of this in 1997 in Yunnan province; it's botanical name is Sinopodophyllum hexandrum var. chinensis ex MD97150. I love the softly furry bud just cracking open, and how the entire plant looks as if it has just emerged fresh from a newly created earth...

But that kind of rhapsodizing is what happens when you look at Far Reaches plants - and now you can not only look through a catalog of these treasures, but  order them online... please patronize Far Reaches Farm and thank them for advertising here on Plant Talk...

Comments

[Riz Reyes]

So thrilled for them! I wish them great success with their mail-order venture!

[Charlie@Seattle Trekker]

I am not new to the gardening world and have been to a lot of meetings, classes, and nurseries over the years. Based on blog posts like this one I have been interested in going to the Far Reaches Farm for some time. When I did go I talked to the owner, the staff, I toured the display gardens, and I bought plants. This is head and shoulders above any nursery I have ever toured. It was amazing, amazing, amazing. This is not your retail nursery this is an experience. I was going to just stop to see it and I spent much more than an hour and left with three new plants.