A Red Hook Adventure

Yesterday, my husband and I and my friend Gina went to Red Hook, Brooklyn to pick up some linens at Ikea and to check out Liberty Sunset Garden Center. I've read about this garden center on 66 Square Feet, she told me about the Fig trees and other trees they have there.  I've been meaning to go there all summer, but due to busy schedules, I just never made it out there until this weekend.  I've been to Red Hook many times, but I never knew they had such a nice garden center there. 

We parked near the pier and since it was a gorgeous day, we decided to walk the pier before we went to the garden center.  I just adore this view! 

As we were walking up the pier we noticed people kayaking in the water, I think they call this water the Gowanus Bay, it's at the mouth of the East River.  (Check out the Staten Island Ferry in the background.  I take this ferry often to get to Manhattan)

We were so fascinated with the kayaking and went to find more information about it. We saw the signup table and saw that the kayaking and lessons were FREE! The organizers said that Oct. 4th is the last weekend they were having free kayaking. Since we weren't going to be able to come back anytime soon, we decided, "hey why not, let's kayak!" 

I'm so glad we spontaneously decided to do this, despite not being dressed for kayaking. His jeans, sneakers and my skirt was soaked afterwards.  I must say, I didn't think this through, because I had to walk around the rest of the day with a wet skirt.  Hahahaha.  And the hubs walked around with wet Converses.  He is such a good sport.  I asked him why he didn't take the shoes off and he said, "I have to step into the dark water to get in the kayak, I don't want to step in something gross barefoot since I can't see the bottom".  Good point, haha.

After we finished kayaking, we went to find the garden center. It was only a block away. Here's the entrance of the Liberty Sunset garden center. I immediately could tell it was something special. There were gorgeous plants growing in front of the fence and gateway.

I was so amazed with the variety of plants at this garden center! So many things to look at and this place was enormous. By far, the best garden center I've seen in the area! They had these large green houses with all kinds of plants inside.  I asked the hubs, can we build a greenhouse like this?  

Isn't this just amazing?? This place had so many nooks and crannies it was so lush and green that I actually lost my husband in there!  I was calling out his name to have him look at some plants and he had wandered off to the other end of the center.  I couldn't even see him, it was a garden maze in there!

This is the reason why I came to the garden center, to find fig trees. They were lovely!   I was so bummed though because these were so tall, easily 7 feet. It would never fit in our car. It's really too late in the season to buy fig trees. I was hoping they had trees half the size.  I'll definitely will be back next year!  I have so many more photos from the garden center, I'll post later!