Tony and I talked about our favorite gifts for gardeners on Tuesday's Homegrown. If you missed it or wanted any of the links, here they are. The best part about most of these gifts is they're perfect for last-minute giving, so procrastinators, take note!

Gift certificates are always welcome—despite the image above, plants are a bit like puppies: You can't put one in a box and leave it under the tree and expect a happy recipient. If you know your gardener has a local nursery he or she adores, your best bet is to start there. However, there are so many great mail-order nurseries out there, so if you're unsure about where to buy a gift certificate, here are a few suggestions of places we love that will send one of their excellent catalogs along with the gift certificate so your lucky gardener can start dreaming about what to buy right away:

Plant Delights is the ultimate for the hard-to-please gardener or the one who seems to have it all already—I can guarantee you the PDN offers stuff they've never heard of before (on a visit to the nursery a few years ago, owner Tony Avent showed me a shrub in his garden that stumped the great Michael Dirr, which is why I can guarantee such a thing!). For the woody plant lover, I'd recommend Forest Farm (for those that like their catalogs encyclopedic) and Fairweather Gardens (especially if the gardener loves camellias or magnolias). Tony and I also mentioned one of our absolute favorite places that we'd both love gift certificates to when we finally have the big, rural gardens we dream of—Oikos Tree Crops. It specializes in native, edible trees and shrubs and has lots of really cool and unusual stuff.

For the vegetable gardener, there are so many choices, but both Johnny's and Baker Creek are great companies that offer really nice, colorful, informative, and fun-to-read catalogs that make the gift extra fun.

I don't want to offend anyone by excluding them, so please take a look at our source list in the left-hand column if you'd like more ideas. There are dozens of fantastic nurseries there, and each one has a short description to help inform your search. Really, when you're buying a gift certificate for a gardener, you simply can't go wrong. I have yet to meet one who wouldn't love the chance to shop for plants!

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