BONDURANT – Alix Crittenden of Sleeping Indian Outfitters in Bondurant is this week’s recipient of the Sage and Snow Garden of Beauty Award. Alix is Bondurant’s queen of flowers. For her “Bondurant Bouquets” flower business, she grows many kinds of  flowers.  Her annual flowers includes cosmos, sunflowers, marigolds,  dahlias, straw flowers, stock flowers, nemesia, pansies, calendula, alyssum,  amaranth, petunias  and zinnias. Some are grown in a large greenhouse, others are grown outdoors in old washtubs, buckets and feed troughs.

She has constructed several outdoor garden beds from rocks, concrete blocks, wood, railroad ties  and other reusable materials to grow an even greater variety of perennial flowers: hollyhock,­ speedwell, lamium, iris, peonies, columbine, Jacob’s ladder, dianthus, hens and chicks, lilies, mallow, tansy, creeping Jenny, snow in summer, Rocky Mountain penstemon and many more.  To add extra interest to her bouquets, Alix also gathers native wildflowers from her yard and ditch bank,  such as prairie smoke, bedstraw, wild carrot and native hollyhock.

Some of the indoor and outdoor garden beds are used for growing vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage, rhubarb, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers.

If you want to join the Bondurant folks in celebrating Alix’s beautiful gardens, she hosts a Garden Party in her yard the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. with plentiful food and drinks and everyone is invited. It is worth a trip to Bondurant to get to know Alix, see all her beautiful flowers, and buy a bouquet.