Best of Tucson 1996: Best Nursery

Best Nursery

Harlow's Nursery
4655 Sunrise Drive 5620 E. Pima St.

READERS' PICK: Harlow's Landscape Center and Nurseries is so immense and well-tended, it's more like a park than a retail plant outlet. Its winding paths lead gardeners through shady glens and sunny billows of flowers. Strategically placed benches invite you to have a seat and visualize the garden of your dreams as you shop for those ideal desert-adapted additions to your own private Eden. Harlow's also boasts a great tool and book boutique, where you'll find the perfect gift for fellow tillers of the soil. Also worthy of mention is their amazing seed selection.

READERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: Mesquite Valley Growers, 8005 E. Speedway, grow their own stock right here in the Sonoran desert, so it's already adapted to our wicked climate. Even their bedding plants are tough. Choose from a mind-boggling array of mostly drought-tolerant plants, many of which you'll be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Look for special theme displays, such as how to attract hummingbirds to your garden. The Growers' staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and there's also a staff of nursery cats that'll keep your own little sprouts amused while you poke around. It's a bit of a pilgrimage east for many of us, but it's worth it.

STAFF PICK: "Glorious!" That's what you'll hear Peter Gierlach (a.k.a. Petey Mesquitey), the Desert Survivors Nursery manager, repeat over and over as he describes the Sonoran desert flora he sells. Desert Survivors is a shining star of a nursery run by people who are deeply rooted in their go-native planting philosophy. If you love the desert, here's the place you've been looking for to fill in your own oasis of perfectly adapted plants for your aesthetic, soil, and wildlife needs. Let Petey talk you into buying some leggy, one-gallon Sonoran transplant that'll transform itself with a minimum of effort once in the ground. You don't have anything to lose: True to their name, Desert Survivors offers a lifetime guarantee on all its Tucson transplants.