Since 2015, SunRise Gardens has provided Columbia Farmers Market customers with high-quality, container-grown native perennials, grasses, ground covers, shrubs, and trees. Available to homeowners, businesses, and organizations in mid-Missouri, plants cultivated in the Columbia nursery are grown with efficient and environmentally responsible practices, a fact that is of utmost importance to Troy Cox, owner of the gardens since 2011.
Growing native plants is our passion. “We enjoy seeing our customers fulfill their garden ambitions with our plants,” Troy said.
Attention to the nursery requires attention every day.
“We spend a lot of time watering and pruning our plants to keep them happy,” Troy said. “Our growing practices include the use of organic fertilizers and integrated pest management, with organic pesticides used only as needed. We minimize runoff from our crops and direct it into pollinator rain gardens.”
Troy appreciates the opportunity the market provides.
“Each week, to sell our products directly to the local mid-Missouri community is an essential link between the producer and the consumer. It is important to have a diversity of people with a diversity of skills found locally. We need to purchase local products and services in order to keep them in business.”
SunRise Gardens also sells at native plant sales sponsored by Grow Native! and the Missouri Prairie Foundation. Troy participates at the Columbia Area Earth Day Festival and the Birds and Bees Festival in Arrow Rock.
“We are always happy to answer customer questions about their gardens, and how they can make their garden more friendly for pollinators and other wildlife,” he said.
To answer your landscaping and native varietal questions, stop by SunRise Gardens for a lesson in native plants or visit SUNRISEGARDENS.NET.
