Destination: Nursery

What Powell’s is to book lovers, Minnesota’s Bachman’s is to garden geeks

(May 21, 2009) I was in Minneapolis last week hanging out with gardeners and horticulturalists from the university. I learned several things about the brave souls who garden in this land of ice and snow:

First, they all want to grow rhododendrons. Go figure! Do you have any idea what it takes to get a rhododendron through a Minnesota winter? And when the shrubs do bloom, leaves emerge on top of the flowers almost immediately, covering them up so you can’t see them. So now the task is to breed a rhododendron that will act like a rhododendron in that climate.

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Oh — and Japanese maples! Can you imagine growing your Japanese maple in an enormous pot and bringing it in all winter long? I met gardeners who have entire rooms devoted to plants they overwinter inside, resulting in serious marital tensions over the long, dark months of winter.

And all I could think was, if you want a garden full of Japanese maples and rhododendrons, why not move to Humboldt County?

But who am I to quibble with the gardening habits of people who can’t even put a shovel in the ground until sometime in May? Here’s the most worthwhile adaptation to the cold that Minnesotans have made: a darn good wine grape called Frontenac, bred by the university by crossing a cold-hardy native grapevine with a French wine grape so that it will survive the snow and ice. It makes for a darn good red: dry, herbal, woodsy, easy to drink but not quite like anything you’ve had before — and in a good way.

I drank more than my share of a bottle of Alexis Bailly Vineyard’s Voyager, and it was like discovering that there was a country between Italy and Spain that I hadn’t heard of before that produced smart, obscure wines. Seriously, you could take a bottle of this to a dinner party and actually end up being the hippest person at the table for introducing California wine snobs to a really good Minnesota wine. Try it sometime.

But here’s the most amazing part about the Minnesota gardening experience: Bachman’s. I had heard about this family-owned local chain of garden centers, and I knew that they were considered a sort of ‘destination’ garden center — the kind of place an out-of-towner would want to check out, even if she couldn’t fit a lot of plants in the suitcase. So I asked my friends to take me there.

Let me tell you: You have never seen anything like this. The Bachman’s store on Lyndale Avenue is a don’t-miss experience, so promise me right now that if you ever find yourself in Minneapolis, you’ll make the time to get over there. You might even want to plan a trip just to see Bachman’s.

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