Nursery campain wrap up 1

Funbo Plantskola

This is the first nursery campain wrap up.

Bloomingwriter (Jodi DeLong) in Canada holds a record I suspect will be hard to beat. She has adopted twentyfive nurseries. You can read about them in two blog posts here and here. All nurseries are companies outside "bigbox bullies" with helpful and competent staff. I don't know about you, but reading these posts makes me yearn for a trip around Canada. Visiting plant nurseries is an excellent way to get to know a country, and a seed envelope (oh, I admit it; a lot of seed envelopes) is an lightweight and nice souvernir*. She has even found a nursery with train memorabilia...

On the swedish side we find my own post on Funbo Plantskola, a small family company with a big love for gardening, sqeezed in between road 282 towards Almunge and Lennakatten preserved railway. A small wink to Joppe with the blog Joppes Gröna Rum (blog in swedish) who's found a small café with ties to gardening in Öhr, Småland (swedish region). As a former perpetual student at Uppsala University I fall for cafés, and will link to the reportage "outside the campain" once it's written.

Finding good nurseries is a feat. Mostly you find them by hearing about them from other garden entusiasts. Note that Bloomingwriter has spent years digging up the nurseries she writes about. If you're out of hearsay the phone catalogue is a good tool - remember that many nurseries still don't have a homepage (on the other hand the phone catalogue may be online). In the long run you can use blogs to find good places. Do some sunday excursions and adopt the worthy according to these rules. (I'm hoping I'll have a nice logo and a central homepage for this campain up next week.)

*Do check the laws on importing plants and seed from another country. A rule of thumb for residents in EU is that you can brings seeds but not plants from outside EU's borders.

And don't forget the poll in the margin ;-)

Funbo Plantskola (nursery)

If you want perfect displays, visit Plantagen (or any other swedish gardening mall).

If you want persons who know gardening and love plants, visit Funbo Plantskola.

It hard to tell why you can feel the love in this place. Some plants could look better, and some places are overgrown.

The display pond of Funbo Plantskola

Still I have the feeling that the entire place would look like the display below, if the owners were given the chance. The staff and the owners are compentent and very helpfull. When I asked for nematodes for my selfwatering containers the owner phoned someone with better knowledge when she herself didn't know the answers. She was also ready to order a new Polstjärnan rose for me, but I had already seen the fun collection of other climbing roses they had and declined the offer. (At the same occasion we learnt that the favorite snowcone of the staff was Geisha.)



If you want the ordinary garden plants like strawberries, red and black currants, tagetes and others you'll find them here. It may be a good idea to make the visit early in the summer, since the nursery is close to many villa suburbias and since gardening is a trend in Sweden right now. Neither do you need to walk far to find the special in the assortment.



I fell for the figs in the greenhouse (someone bought the plant with fruits before I returned with my camera. Is that a way to behave? Destroying a perfect motif like that...) You can also find different sorts of verbeneceae, fuchsias and geraniums. Their motherplants are placed in the back of the greenhouse one on two big worktops. Different spices, chilis and tomatoes are available too. For some reason I didn't buy myself a new ordinary basil. The one I have in my gardens are thai basil, and I'm not sure I want to make pesto with liqorice flavour.



There was a second greenhouse. Half of it was filled with plants for sale, and half of it was marked for other things like test cultivation of tomatoes.

Small display showing perennial of the year through the ages.

This is where you find the big whine (and the worktop of the staff).



In here you find a sofa and some armchairs to sit down and rethink your garden, or your purchases (or just to hear your slim wallet cry softly). Note the style of the furniture and the truly authentich 70s style of the cushions.

My husband, ignoring the garden gnome tomato dealers.

This is one exemple of the care showed to customers. Visiting a nursery with a twoyearold can be a trying experience for child and parents/standupcomedians/eventplanners alike. At Funbo Plantskola you find a sandbox. And if there was only a sandbox it would have been quite the ordinary. This one is filled with toys. You don't have to bring your own or convince your little one plastic glases will work just as well.



To be honest my little one cared more for these.

Five blue budgies.

As I write this I realise I didn't take so much photos outside the greenhouses - which is natural for an indoor gardener. This is one of the welcome displays for visitors.



As you can see there are wheelbarrows available for anyone intent on big investments, and the outdoor garden are walkable. A small place, and still you find surprises around the corner almost everywhere. I found several trays of Rügen strawberries, impossible to find at bigger chains. Together with my little one I tasted the raspberries growing wild beneath the rose desks, and then I meditated over the whines.

I've dreamt about growing whine for a very long time.

How to get there? Well, by car is certainly an option. The nursery have parking lots, and is close to one of the bigger ways out of Uppsala. By close I mean; take way #282 towards Faringe, drive some ten kilometers, turn right and you're there. If you can't take the car there are out of town buses, ie bus 809 from Uppsala Central station, step of at bus stop Bärby in Gunsta and walk from there. The bustrip takes 12 minutes and the walk about 5.

Yo man! Want a deal on tomatoes?

In the summer you can make it a picknick (garden furnitures and icecreams available) and go by Lennakatten. The nursery is placed right beside the tracks and if you are lucky you'll see a steamtrain pass during the visit. If you go by the train you step off at Bärby and walk about 200 meters (roughly 220 yards). When I have traveled the train has had an cargo wagon used for prams, but I suspect that if you ask nicely on the way out or when you buy the ticket you'll be allowed to transport bigger items in there too.

If you haven't guessed it already Lennakatten is the preserved railway of Uppsala (ie. not attched to the ordinary railway system). An entusiastic association drives railcars and steamtrains between Uppsala and Faringe. The last time we visited Funbo Plantskola we were lucky enough to see two steamtrains puffing their way along the tracks. I really tried to get a good picture, but those ironhorses can be fast for an old digital camera.



This blog post is part of the Campain for Adopting a Nursery. Adopt one you too.


This was my adoption reportage of Funbo Plantskola. Now I hope to see more, and that's not because I want more of places like this to visit, oh no! ;-) Tomorrow I'll do my first weekly campain wrap up. And I added a new poll just for the fun of it.

The campain for adopting a nursery

Photo "New Dawn", photografer "yamada*", you find his profile and more of his photos here.

In Uppsala there's a nursery called Rosendal (not to be mixed up with Rosendal in Stockholm). It was there when I moved to this town, and for a few years I had the peculiar habit of getting this yearning in spring. I wanted to go to Rosendal for no reason at all - and every time I got there they had started to sell their yearly breed of fuchsia cuttings. Sure, I love fuchsias, but they can't call to me over several kilometers (miles), can they?

Then a big gardening chain called Plantagen ("the Plantation") swept over Sweden, and among other places opened a big mall in Uppsala. Pretty soon Rosendal was bought by another gardening chain called Blomsterlandet ("the Flowerbed") and the assortement changed. Rosendal is now an gardening mall, were you find basic plants, garden furniture and outdoor grills. It's not all that bad. You can buy the most common plants to reasonable prices, and mostly you know enough about these to not need to ask anything about them (eventhough the employees may well know a lot about gardening). And I found borrowing a porch swing handy when the little one needed some comforting.

But the thing lost was the gardening joy. Old Rosendal was owned by someone who loved plants, and that made it's mark on everything. You could see it on the care for the place, you could see it in the displays and most of all you could see it in the choice of plants. Every time you went there you found the plants of the season with a little extra something - some plant that's grown in a too small amount to be profitable, but someone bought it and displayed it anyhow, just for the fun of it. I'm still disappointed that I didn't buy mini papyrus in container when they had it - just to mention one exemple.

Eventhough I enjoy a trip to Plantagen every now and then I can't help missing the old Rosendal. This day I talked my husband into buying the new plants for the balcony from Funbo Plantskola (Funbo nursery). I've heard about this nursery from friends, who's taken this as a new place to go since Blomsterlandet devoured our Rosendal. They have a good homepage (only in Swedish unfortunately), but look a bit dull when you pass it by, so I haven't got around to get there eariler. I had no idea about what to expect when I went inside the gates.

I entered their greenhouse and fell in love immediately. You have to fall in love when you see rows and rows of wellkept potted plants. And when I found a healthy wine heavy with grapes in the next greenhouse I was sold completely. Growing wine in Sweden is hard and considered very exotic. For a while I just walked around the plants and plantations with a happy smile on my face.

On the other hand I couldn't miss the fact that there were overgrown places and parts that could use a bit more care. Since some plants were spotless (I assume they sell well and that care is concentrated to them) it's not a question of classical neglect. Rather the nursery recieves less customers than it need to keep the economy up, ie. no money to hire enough gardeners. This reminded me of the paradox in gardening Sweden today; gardening is trendy right now, quite the go, and this means that nurseries like Funbo and old Rosendal are forced to close down (or join a bigger chain and loose their soul). Plantagen and Blomsterlandet are too strong competitors, not because of their assortment or competence, but because of their handy location that people never get the idea to go somewhere else.

We're loosing something in this process, namely the possibility to grow a garden with something special. Eventhough the assortment of Plantagen is big, it's also only the normal plants. Unless mini papyrus in container gets trendy, you wont find it there. Perhaps not the end of the world, but admit that life becomes a little bit more dull this way.

Swedes have a tendency to do just like anyone else - in Sweden. This means I can't really say if this phenomenon is international or just local. However I'm starting up the campain for adopting a nursery on Indoor Gardener too (it's very much needed in Sweden). Do like this; find a close by nursery not linked to a bigger chain, visit it and see if it's good. If it is, buy some plants and add a link to it on your blog in the same way I've done (look in the right margin). If the nursery don't have a homepage just display the adress and opening hours and add something about their assortment. Write a post about the nursery on your blog, and mention this on a commentary here at Indoor Gardener.

I'll do a weekly wrap up, linking to your nursery posts. It's permissible to adopt a nursery already 'taken'. Do spread the campain to garden bloggers I haven't reached. (Heh. I realise this means you can save a nursery and do some shopping in the same time - if only all good deeds were this fun :-) )

Unfortunately I didn't bring the camera to Funbo Plantskola this time, you'll have to wait a couple of times for my reportage. This time I bought the rose "New Dawn" which will replace my old rose on the balcony - and some extra strawberries for the kiddo.