Forget Pet Rocks, We've got Living Stones!

Aren't these wild? Lithops are a type of ice plant from South Africa. Living stones flower in the fall during October and November, so ours are flowering right now!

Those things that look like toes are the leaves, and the flower pokes up in between the two halves. After flowering, the old leaves shrivel up and completely replaced by two new leaves.

We have a "How to Care for Lithos" pamphlet available at the shop, and the instructions are pretty simple. You mist them with water once every two weeks during the winter months and then in the spring you start misting once a week until it flowers in fall. This is a great gift for kids and grownups alike!

Victoria Gardens Hosts a Quilt and Garden Show for a Good Cause

Master gardener, Cheryl Alloway, helped organize this great event. The Friendly Neighbors Quilting Group brought over one hundred quilts and displayed them inside and outside in the nursery. Addmission is canned food and the donations benefit the Food pantries of Rosaendale and Marbletown.

Read this article in Ulster Publishing for more details.

Unearthing the past: Finding a one-of-a-kind nursery

Press Release

Unearthing the past: Finding a one-of-a-kind nursery

When landscape designer Victoria Coyne and her husband, Wayne Waddell, first saw the rundown hillside property in Rosendale, New York, they saw a cement block, one-story building with a caved in roof and a back lot covered with debris and tires, but they had a vision of a grand, open space with cathedral-like ceilings and an impeccable outdoor nursery. Their vision became a reality with the grand opening of The Shop @ Victoria Gardens, March 1, 2007.
The couple had suspected that there were veins of bedrock through the property, but as they dug out over 400 tires and other debris from the property they realized that there was a shelf of bedrock that extended for almost 1,300 square feet. Wayne cleared off 200 yards of soil with a Backhoe, and then the two took turns power washing the surface.
What they uncovered was an almost level 375 million year old bedrock shelf that was at one time under the ocean. The rock’s surface is covered with fossils of shells and sea creatures. This bedrock is the magical setting for an enchanting nursery.

Victoria has been gardening in the Hudson Valley professionally for over 20 years. With that experience and knowledge, Victoria brings in specimens of perennials, shrubs, and trees that have performed well in the area for her in past, and she is also always seeking to introduce new plants that suite the weather and terrain.
The plants are sourced from quality growers, with whom Victoria has known and worked with for years. Victoria Gardens is an impeccable nursery where all the plants are well cared for.
The nursery is not set up in sterile rows of plants, but rather, presented in vignettes of complementary plants that provide a visual sense how they will look in your own garden. Victoria divides the nursery in to four categories: Full sun, shade, deer resistant full sun, and deer resistant shade.
Inside the beautiful cedar-sided building, white maples cut from the property tower from floor to ceiling. The columns of trees and huge south facing windows gives the building the look and feel of a church, a place where gardeners might come to pay homage to the newest Echinacea hybrid, or the autumn-blooming clematis.
The garden center carries tools, pottery, gifts, outdoor furniture, and organic alternatives to insecticides, fungicides, and fertilizers.
The Shop at Victoria Gardens is more than a spectacular, rock-top nursery and garden center; it is a little piece of Horticultural Heaven. It is a destination.