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 Great Outdoors.

The Great Outdoors is located in the South-Austin-hippie-meets-hipster zone of Congress Avenue just south of downtown. It carries a good selection of annuals and perennials, including plenty of natives, plus lots of succulents, bamboos, and edibles.

It’s also a great spot to find fun garden decor, like these pots and metal prickly pear sculptures.

And if shopping makes you hungry or thirsty, you can stop for a refreshment at the cafe located on the grounds, with a deck overlooking the nursery.

But back to the pot selection—TGO carries beautiful containers you won’t find anywhere else, like these…

…and these handmade, dino egg-like creations.

You’ll find succulents and cactus galore—perfect for filling seasonal planters.

And the garden shop behind the succulent tables, you’ll notice, has a green roof.

Here’s something I’ve never seen at any other nursery: crested golden barrel cactus.

The agave and yucca section at the top of the hill (this is a nursery with some elevation changes) is chock full of larger specimens.

And look—they’re into culvert-pipe planters too, but they paint theirs. These orange ones were for sale.

So was this blue one.

TGO is the place to go for fun or funky, spiritual or ironic garden art, like this Winnebago birdhouse.

Or a mosaic-tile toilet fountain.

Or painted metal birdhouses and animals.

Or Buddhas and bonsai.

Inside the garden shop you’ll find plenty to tempt you as well.

You can spend a good hour strolling the shady grounds to see everything, despite the urban location.

You might even see Merrideth Jiles, the nursery’s general manager and an all-around nice guy. He and his staff are always ready to answer your gardening questions and help you find what you’re looking for, so check them out the next time you’re south of downtown.

Now for the giveaway! The Great Outdoors is giving away a $50 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 10/28: The winner is announced 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 27th.
4. I’ll announce the winner on October 28th.
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.

It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on The Great Outdoors, located just south of the hip strip known as SoCo on South Congress Avenue. (This is an update of a recent post I wrote about TGO.)

For a nursery within spitting distance of downtown, The Great Outdoors is surprisingly large, which befits a place featuring a nearly life-size topiary elephant as its mascot and another on its sign.

From the street you glimpse a colorful mural, a screen of ornamental grasses, cannas, Pride of Barbados…

…and a rainbow of flowering purslane.

The nursery is situated on a sloping, live oak-shaded property, with shady paths leading to well-marked plant sections.

The succulent and cactus area is always tempting.

Mmm, look at all that agave goodness.

They’re all so gorgeous.

This is one of my current faves: Agave americana mediopicta ‘Alba.’

Down the hill, a gift shop surprises with a green roof.

Smaller cacti and succulents are offered here.

A lot of these are tender in our climate, but they can be treated as annuals or brought inside for the winter.

Fun garden decor abounds.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Tempting displays of glazed pots and fountains

Here’s a nice combo: white echinacea and silver artemesia. This would be perfect for a moonlight garden, and it’s visually cooling during the day.

This is inspirational: silvery plants (acacia, silver ponyfoot, gopher plant) paired with white pots.

The sun-loving perennials and butterfly-attracting plants occupy the main part of the nursery, with a vegetable section under the arbor.

Pots for those hot-hued plants

And when the death star is trying to kill your gardening joy, embrace summer (or Halloween) with grim reaper garden art.

More pots—a rainbow of choices.

These metal roosters would be the perfect decor for all those Austin hen houses, and they’re quiet too.

Zebra plant (Aphelandra squarrosa) in lemon-yellow pots

An eye-catching wall display near the checkout counter

The Great Outdoors carries a good selection of natives and well-adapted perennials, as well as clumping bamboo, semi-hardy Australian acacias, tropicals, and agaves and other succulents. The garden art is fun and mostly of the kitschy variety, and you can find lots of glazed pots and a few water features for sale. A cafe with a shady deck sits at street level and overlooks the nursery, providing a great spot to take a break and ponder your plant list, which you’re about to deviate from with some impulse buys. And who can blame you?

Join me next Wednesday as I post about Hill Country Water Gardens & Nursery. For a look back at my post about The Natural Gardener, click here. And please check out my sidebar link Area Nurseries, where I’ve posted photo tours of many of our local garden centers and described what I like about each one. Austin gardeners are blessed with so many good local nurseries. Let’s support them in this tough economy and help them stay in business. I can’t imagine gardening without them. Can you?

Also, check out these posts about The Great Outdoors by other Austin garden bloggers:
J Peterson Garden Design
Gardening in Austin

And don’t forget about the Austin Nurseries Giveaway, going on now through October 26. I’m hosting a giveaway for a $100 gift certificate and Fall Power Package from Barton Springs Nursery, and 7 other Austin bloggers are hosting giveaways from other area nurseries. Visit all 8 posts and leave comments to enter!

All material © 2006-2011 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

After the magical orca-watching experience from shore on San Juan Island, we doubted we could top it, even though we’d already reserved a whale-watching expedition in Vancouver, British Columbia, the final stop on our Pacific Northwest vacation last month. And we were right. It was more incredible to see orcas from shore and hear them blowing as they surfaced than from a noisy boat.

But look at the picture above and tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to see more too, any way you could.

And just look at what it took. Yes, that is me and my family all togged out in anti-exposure suits, required wear for the speed-boat whale-chasing we’d signed on for. I’d been following our tour company, Wild Whales Vancouver, on Facebook for months, and I knew that our trip could be as short as three hours, if whales were cruising near Vancouver, or as long as seven hours if the whales were hunting down in the San Juan Islands. Guess what? They were in the San Juans on the day of our tour, and we were informed that it would be a long day on the water to go find them. Ever game for adventure, we wiggled into our puffy anti-exposure suits, marched through Granville Island market, all bundled up and feeling extremely silly on a beautiful, warm morning, and boarded our 23-person speedboat.

Our guide sat at the bow, using a microphone to tell us about the wildlife we might see. Vancouver’s beautiful skyline spread out in the distance as we moved away from shore. Soon the captain revved the jet engine, and we were off across the Strait of Georgia, pounding over whitecaps whipped up by a stiff breeze, with icy sea water gushing in over the bow with each spine-jarring bump. We immediately understood the reason for the anti-exposure suits and struggled to zip them up tight under our chins and cinch our hoods around our faces. I clenched a plastic trash bag around my camera and gasped and laughed as each chilly spray hit me in the face.

Three hours later we slowed as we reached the San Juan Islands, Washington, and we recognized Lime Kiln Lighthouse. Only the day before we’d been on San Juan Island, and here we were again, following the same orcas we’d seen there from shore.

The first creatures we saw were harbor seals, aka rock sausages.

Moms and pups basked on a small, rocky island surrounded by kelp.

The three pods of resident orcas in this area don’t eat seal, only fish, but for the migrating pods known as transient orcas, seal is a delicacy.

They didn’t seem too concerned.

A few minutes later, we found a pod of resident orcas.

It was thrilling to see orcas again, even though the boat noise kept it from being as intimate an experience as we’d had on shore. Our captain kept a respectful distance. Whale-watching regulations require that boats stay at least 100 yards from orcas, and on the ocean side of them since they like to herd fish toward shore in order to catch them. Boats are also not allowed to follow them for longer than one hour in order to reduce stress on the animals.

We did get some marvelous views of the killer whales as they cruised south along San Juan Island. Just imagine if you lived in this house, watching whales go by as you sip your morning coffee on the deck.

There’s a baby on the left, staying close to two females (I believe). And is that a green roof on that house on the bluff?

A closer look

At this point a phalanx of whale-watching boats were trailing the whales, including another Wild Whales Vancouver jet boat. See everyone in their orange anti-exposure suits? We knew they’d just endured a 3-hour race here too.

Other whale watchers

As the whales continued south, we followed. When Mt. Baker appeared over the island, with orcas in the foreground, I saw the mother of all photo opportunities. It was a breathtaking vista.

These lucky boaters ended up surrounded by orcas. When that happens, regulations call for turning off the engine and staying put. What a close view they got.

Those are some big dorsal fins.

A wider view

This male surfaced near our boat, eliciting oohs and wows from everyone.

Going…

…going…

…gone!

Seven hours after starting out, we cruised back into Vancouver, a city sandwiched between snow-capped mountains and the ocean. So much beautiful scenery to see here!

Up next: I have just one more vacation post, about Vancouver’s Capilano Suspension Bridge, and then I’ll be back to writing about my own Austin garden and three cool, new planters I’ve made. For a look back at our visit to San Juan Island, click here.

All material © 2006-2011 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.