While I was out scouting fruit trees at a local nursery for an upcoming post on my gardening site, Hot Gardens, I spent a few minutes wandering through Zocalo Village. This “village”, adjacent to the Green Things nursery, is filled with Mexican handcrafts and pottery, particularly Talavera garden pots on sale.
To be fair there are at least six other shops around Tucson that sell Talavera pottery, but I had intended to go a on a fruit tree hunt. Not a pottery hunt. Nonetheless, here is what I saw…and I didn’t even have to go across the border.
There seem to be acres of pots of all sizes in various shades of blue. Those tall ones in the center of this photo are at least 5 feet tall. And making pots that large in one piece is an amazing accomplishment of working with clay.
One side of the driveway through the nursery had gazillions of sizes and shapes and shades of blue pots, on the other side of the drive were the decorative Talavera pots. Some in the “blue section” were made in Vietnam, others in Mexico.
These very tall black and white zig zag pots are clearly two pots stacked together, unlike those cobalt blue ones, above, which were one piece.
More hand-painted Talavera pots to decorate home and garden.
And as I wandered about I came upon this beautiful desert planting by an example of a patio.
A demonstration planting by a covered patio: Golden barrel cactus, saguaros, prickly pear cactus with the Santa Catalina Mountains in the distance. It was 72 F in mid-February in Tucson. Spring is starting now.
