Albert's Greenhouse

Continuing the set of pictures and narrative from our trip last Spring... Columbia Road Flower Market is held on Sundays in East London. Since my wife was interested in seeing the many food markets that London has to offer, I was able to sneak in a visit to this large, weekly horticultural market not too far from Brick Lane.

When visiting a foreign country, or even just the next town over, I like to spend a little time looking at whatever plants they may have for sale. In some countries, it's just gathered medicinal herbs and some farmed produce, and in others you get a wide variety of sometimes unidentifiable but decorative specimens.

I'd have to say that this flower market in London boasted a lot of well-grown material, yet nothing much that we couldn't find back home. There were plenty of cut flowers, bedding plants and even tropicals. The emphasis was more on plants suited for a slightly cooler climate than ours, which makes a lot of sense.

They did have a few surprises such as this cart of sarracenia and succulents ... The plants themselves are not so surprising, but one gets the feeling that they actually felt they might sell this many plants to the public on a single rainy Sunday at the end of March.