A Trip to Terrain

Finally a gorgeous day, so we hopped in the car and headed up towards Philadelphia to Terrarium Terrain, Anthropology’s garden shop and nursery. It reminded me, in equal parts, of Smith & Hawken, back before Target got its hands on it, and Petersham Nursery, a garden shop/Michelin-starred restaurant outside of London, which I visited several years ago.There are only two Terrain outposts, one outside of Philadelphia and the other in Westport, Connecticut. Funnily enough, one of my besties was in the Connecticut shop last week and raved to me about how terrific it was!

Even though I am not a gardener, I have an appreciation for great terracotta pots. My father, who was a very good gardener, and President of the Maryland Horticulture Society for a number of years, had an extensive collection of terracotta pots in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps not quite this extensive, but not far from it.

Although we’re just coming off a harsh winter, including snow on Friday, there was a fairly decent number of plants available, although mostly succulents, begonias, bromeliads and other similar varieties.

Since Easter is just a few weeks away, there were plenty of great items to fill or make a basket including these EggNots, which are clay eggs which you can decorate.

There was also a good kitchen section, with tabletop items and cookbooks.

I thought these cutting boards, made of maple and marble were fun, and elsewhere in the store, they were used for chargers.

I am a huge fan of bright and cheery flowers, especially ranunculus, which always remind me of my first solo trip to France and the Netherlands. I needed something to brighten up a small hotel room, so bought a huge bunch of ranunculus.

There’s a restaurant at Terrain, similar to Petersham Nursery, but we didn’t have a reservation and found that it would be almost a two-hour wait, so we declined. You can wander around the greenhouses on the property, but they, and the yard, were both pretty empty as the gardening season hasn’t started yet.

My friend Jonathan came home with a carload of plants, which are headed to the greenhouse in preparation for summer.

I managed to resist a lot of things, including these gorgeous glasses, which I shot several times.

I bought one small plant that looks like it came from an alien planet, and two packages of paper to make cyanotype prints from… kind of sad, huh?