When I left San Francisco last month, my daughter-in-law Yan Zhang gave me one tiny cutting from each of the succulents growing on her rooftop garden. I wrapped them in damp paper towels, stuck them in a baggie, brought them home in my carry-on, and planted them in a shallow terracotta pot. Since then, I’ve been looking in local garden centers for the stone trough that will be their permanent home. 
Driving east along Rte 27 in Water Mill last week, I spotted a place that promised to have just that. A quick U-turn brought me to The Laurel Group Home and Garden Shop, where I was greeted at the entrance by an inspirational collection of miniature desert landscapes in troughs. (There’s a trough category in our Garden Club’s flower show coming up next spring, and I’d love to be able to produce a respectable entry.)
Outside the shop, outdoor room settings beckon and containers of every size and shape are helpfully grouped by color.
Big, beautiful, but not what I need right now. What would await me inside?
Indoor garden rooms, furnishings and accessories… and lots and lots of pots.
And there, on the floor, was exactly what I was looking for, the square trough underneath the round one. It’s made of “Fiber Cement,” a material that looks like stone but weighs 7 lbs, not the 30 lbs or more a cast concrete trough of that size would weigh.
The Laurel Group specializes in large residential and commercial landscape projects, but the manager who assisted me, Jackie Fagereng, was delightfully helpful with my one small purchase.
Next up… planting the container.
Wow! I’m glad you took all of those pictures because I seemed to have missed a lot of the stuff (probably to busy with my phone —- grrrr).