
Last weekend Loree and I hit Hughes Water Gardens, a place which is, objectively speaking, heavenly. Fish and tadpoles and ponds and and incredible selection water plants. I would try to take all of them home, if only I had a pond. *kicking myself for not having a pond yet*

Look at all the cute little gunnera, I could just hug them.

Some of their plants out there can be satisfied with a bog, or kept in a non-draining pot, and those I push my luck with and try them, but this place really makes you want a serious business water feature. Love the foliage on this mosaic plant (ludwiga sedioides).

And since I developed a serious papyrus addiction in the last couple years, I really should have been coming out to Hughes for my fix. Short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones. You get the idea.

An adorable dwarf papyrus.

Here’s a flower I can get behind, star grass (dichromena), on an evergreen water dwelling sedge.

They had a bunch of little inspirational pots, just enough to get you started with some boggy plants.

There are all kinds of potted water gardens on display. They had several like this, that combined a water garden with a kind of rock garden alpine look, as if to say, “don’t worry that you don’t have a pond, you can just buy some expensive pots to grow these fantastic plants.”

The pond plants aren’t the only thing out of reach at Hughes. They also have a bunch of crazy big tropicals, and a papyrus so huge I almost cried. If there were anything that could make me want to move to a warmer climate, that would be it.