Each week in October, which is Support Your Independent Nursery Month, I am featuring one of my favorite Austin-area nurseries here at Digging. To make things even more interesting, I’m also hosting a giveaway every week—one from each nursery! This week I’m shining a spotlight on The Natural Gardener.

The Natural Gardener is one of those nurseries in which you can easily spend an hour or two looking at plants, exploring the display gardens, looking at the donkeys, goats, and chickens with your kids, strolling the labyrinth, investigating the supersized tepee, and shopping in the nursery store. The extensive grounds and rural setting (though the surrounding area is increasingly being built out with homes and apartments) will make you feel as if you’re visiting a small farm, with rows of vegetables being tended by staff members, animals fed and cared for, swings in the trees for catching a cool breeze, and garden features meant for contemplative enjoyment.

John Dromgoole owns The Natural Gardener, and thanks to his long-running radio show, weekly TV appearances on Central Texas Gardener, and community activism, he’s the larger-than-life face of the nursery.

When you visit—and you must visit; this is an iconic nursery in Austin—you’ll find plenty to do, as this nursery map illustrates.

Or use this quirky signpost to get pointed in the right direction.

The Natural Gardener has a great selection of plants, including many natives and other adapted plants, succulents, woody lilies, herbs, and edibles.

The shrub and tree section is particularly good.

So is the succulent section.

One of my pet peeves at nurseries is bad or missing signage. The Natural Gardener scores extra points for clear signage with helpful growing information.

This place is decked out year-round with fun garden decor. Right now it’s all pumpkins and sunflowers.

Pots make great decoration too, of course, and N.G. has plenty of them, in all colors.

The display gardens just keep growing; each year, it seems, a new garden appears. This is the stream garden.

Here’s the working vegetable garden. They’re even growing corn!

And here’s someone hard at work.

This inviting swing overlooks a pretty herb garden. You’ll find a fruit orchard nearby.

Making the nursery fun for kids to visit are resident goats…

…chickens, and donkeys, whose braying usually tells you where they are.

A butterfly- and dragonfly-stamped path leads to a lovely butterfly garden right off the parking lot.

Stroll it for relaxation…

…or to get planting ideas for attracting butterflies to your own garden.

The information shed is where you’ll find knowledgeable staff members ready to answer your questions. You’ll also find plenty of staffers working the grounds, and they’re quick to ask if you need help finding anything.

In the nursery shop you’ll find nice restrooms (always a plus!) and seeds galore.

I often come to the nursery just to shop for gifts. I love their handcrafted garden/home decor.

They also have an excellent tool selection as well as garden books and bird feeders. And I haven’t even mentioned the educational offerings, like regular garden speakers and classes, or the homemade soil offerings, which include the popular Ladybug brand. There’s so much to see here, and you’ll find more about this excellent nursery in an earlier post I wrote about The Natural Gardener. I encourage you to visit and see what it has to offer.

Now for the giveaway! The Natural Gardener is giving away a $25 gift certificate to one of my lucky readers! Just leave a comment on this post to enter, and I’ll announce the winner at the end of the week. Update 10/7/12: The winner announcement is here.

Giveaway Rules:
1. You must leave a comment on this post to enter.
2. Only one entry per person is allowed.
3. Giveaway ends at 11:59 pm on October 6th.
4. I’ll announce the winner on October 7th.
5. The winner must go to the nursery with a photo ID to claim the prize within two weeks of winning. Prizes will not be mailed.
6. The winner is not eligible to win any other giveaways at Digging for 2012′s Support Your Independent Nursery Month.

Remember, win or lose, if you live here in Austin you’ve already hit the jackpot with a great selection of local nurseries at which to shop, learn, and be inspired.

Disclosure: I’ve posted about this nursery because it’s one I shop at regularly and recommend to others. I invited the owner/manager to participate in a giveaway for my readers, but my post was not conditional on any donation. Plain and simple: I like this nursery and think you will too.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

My family and I recently enjoyed a nearly two-week vacation in Colorado, and I’d love to share some photos from Rocky Mountain National Park, a favorite destination for this Texan looking to escape the heat for a little while. Bear Lake Trail is an easy hike around a small, nearly circular mountain lake on the east side of the park. Although the trail is heavily used by visitors, I still find a slow meander around the lake to be a restorative experience.

We’ve walked around Bear Lake many times before, on sunnier days. But this time rain clouds had socked in the lake, making for a dreamy, contemplative hike.

On this still day, the glassy surface reflected a mirror image of the surrounding firs, pines, and mountain ridges.

Although the pine bark beetle has killed off many thousands of evergreens in the park, Bear Lake is still relatively untouched, although we did see stands of dead trees here and there. All part of the natural process, we were told, though it’s still sad to see entire mountainsides of bare trunks and fallen trees.

Shapely, white-trunked aspens are a favorite of mine. Walking through a grove of them, with their fluttering leaves overhead, is almost a transcendent experience.

We saw some cute critters, including this bold golden-mantled ground squirrel…

…and lots of birds, including this small nesting female, who flitted into a crevice under a rock shelf, right in front of our eyes, where she settled on her nest of peeping chicks, which we could only hear, not see.

She was quite safe from predators there, as the rock face was steep, and her nest situated under a overhanging ledge.

I don’t know what this satiny gray-trunked tree is, but its bark was very beautiful.

I spotted a number of wildflowers along the trail as well. though I don’t have IDs for any of them. This is a groundsel…

…and this is cow parsnip (thanks for the IDs, Tina).

Beautiful texture amid the ferny undergrowth

We also drove Trail Ridge Road, which takes you seemingly to the top of the world at 12,183 feet elevation. We took a short walking path through the tundra, admiring alpine plants that eke out a living up here, with a growing season of only about 40 days.

It’s easy to get altitude sickness at this elevation, if you’re not careful. That happened to me one year, when we walked the trail on an intensely sunny day. As I got back in the car, a stabbing headache, sensitivity to light, and severe nausea set in, and all I could do was close my eyes and slump against the window until we got back down to our cabin in Estes Park at 7,500 feet. Luckily, that didn’t happen this year.

We were higher than some clouds.

Later we spotted this elk on the side of the road, and I snapped a few photos through the windshield.

Majestic, no?

In one of the valleys, a sighting of a female moose having lunch in a marshy area stopped traffic on the park road, as several of us pulled over to have a look through binoculars and telephoto lenses. Wildlife sightings are one of the highlights of a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park, along with beautiful scenery and mountaintop vistas.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Skulls, skeletons, gravestone fragments, gargoyles, and other eerie tokens are tucked into nooks and crannies…

…and dangle from the eaves throughout Wamboldtopia, an art-filled garden (or garden of art) and stonemason’s paradise located off Wamboldt Avenue in west Asheville.

The Goth accents…

…are countered by a slew of whimsical fairy houses…

…stone maidens and other garden guardians…

…and life-affirming messages.

Light and dark, life and death—

It’s all represented in this joint creation by artist Damaris Pierce…

…and dapper stonemason Ricki Pierce…

…aka the Rock Pirate.

Hood ornament on Ricki’s truck

Formerly a couple but still friendly collaborators, Damaris and Ricki jointly created the hillside garden that is their home (each has a house on-site), office, experimental play space, and art gallery.

Our first stop on last week’s Garden Bloggers Fling, Wamboldtopia was our introduction to Asheville gardens, where recycled and handmade art often stand on equal footing with the plants that mingle in a lush tangle and cascade down steep hillsides.

From the street, a stairway rises through a brick arch, leading up to the houses and into the garden. The arch spells out “Wamboldtopia.”

I’m sure the owners, who are gracious and welcoming, are often surprised to find unannounced visitors poking through the fantastical garden. What a nicely worded sign asking for a little advance notice.

Handmade sculpture adorns the garden at every turn. This one is reminiscent of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings, with a vaguely floral sexuality, don’t you think?

The stonework has a hobbity, fantasyland appeal.

This gravestone fragment is simultaneously Goth and life-affirming.

A jeweled scepter

Rock cairn

An old boot turned into a planter

OK, so I’m still on the entryway. I love this repurposed hoop installation along the stair rail, which seems to be bouncing down the stairs.

There’s Dee of Red Dirt Ramblings at the bottom of the stairs. The back of the arch spells out “You are loved.”

Drooling gargoyle? No, that’s a spiderweb catching the morning light.

As you reach the main level of the garden, the part that surrounds the two houses, you see this pretty fish pond at eye level as you ascend the stairs.

Rustic seating offers a place to sit and admire the view.

That’s what Buddha’s doing.

I love this groundcovering plant with big leaves with a red eye at the center and rosy undersides. Update: It’s Begonia grandis, or hardy begonia. Thanks to Jenn, Les, and Lisa for the ID.

A tiny circular patio, like a fairy ring

Another guardian face

The back of the garden is fenced with chain link. Damaris and Ricki have taken a creative approach to disguising it, by plastering a concrete-like mix onto a chicken-wire framework and making a fantasy-scape of belltowers…

…fairy houses and archways.

The marriage of recycled and handmade art…

…and a naturalistic hillside garden made for the perfect introduction to Asheville’s arty-hippie scene and great natural beauty.

For a look back at the Curve Studios garden, which blends lovely plant combos with recycled metal hardscaping, click here. Next up: A snapshot of the Burton Street Community Peace Garden and Sunny Point Cafe garden.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.