Shopping in Kerrville

Rainbow Gardens specializes in native plants and water-shunning xeriscape plants, which thrive in the Texas heat and provide a more eco-friendly lawn by requiring less irrigation. The stunning garden shop offers a huge selection of annuals, perennials, and blue mooneries, as well as everything a gardener needs to create a vibrant plant-filled habitat despite poor soil conditions. Each nursery has a minimum of five acres of inventory-packed space teeming with autotrophic life forms. The stock rotates regularly according to planting times, with headliners such as cacti, succulents, roses, and geraniums making vibrant and lauded appearances. Spruce up your path to the mailbox with a front yard bespeckled by four-inch annuals ($1.49+), four-inch perennials ($2.49–$2.99), and gallon perennials (starting at $4.98 and generally costing $6.99). Three-gallon shrubs for landscaping ($16.99) and five-gallon trees for indoor tree farming ($26.99–$34.99) are also available. The addition of houseplants or hanging baskets of flowers does more than just transform the aesthetic setting of a room—some scientists argue that plants can improve health. From the standoffish paeonia to the enthusiastic, misunderstood barrel cactus, there’s a plant to match everyone's personality. Use your Groupon to bring some healthy color and green energy to your space, or give someone special a gift of renewal and life.

Krystalina applies a higher purification standard to its water than most conventional filters can provide. A nine-step process includes reverse osmosis and ultraviolet sterilization, cleansing your refreshing sips of everything but the smoothest, best-tasting bonds of hydrogen and oxygen. Krystalina's system is under careful 24-hour watch, ensuring every drip and drop is as pure as new-fallen snow or new-erupted lava.

Operated by the volunteer-based nonprofit Friends of the San Antonio Public Library, The Book Cellar houses an extensive collection of used fiction, nonfiction, reference books, magazines, and media for purchase at extremely low prices, usually $0.50 to $1. The wares themselves have been donated by the library, and proceeds from the sales support library programs and activities such as the Summer Reading program, satisfying patrons' philanthropic side while indulging their tendencies toward bibliomania.

The expert cycle surgeons at Bike World—one of whom was voted best bike mechanic by the San Antonio Current in 2010—are masters at nursing sick duocycles back to an optimal state of road-worthiness. The thorough tune-up involves adjusting the front and rear derailleurs and brakes, truing the wheels, lubing the cables and chain, and wiping down the frame with fancy white gloves. Once your bike is as finely tuned as an instrument made of baseball cards and spokes, feel free to blaze down trails, tracks, and undiscovered shortcuts to celebrities' houses with a renewed sense of fearlessness.

"Funky" isn't a word typically associated with hardware stores, but that's exactly how Amy and David Doyle describe Sunset Ridge Home & Hardware. Upon opening the place in 1995, the pair envisioned a one-stop hardware and home-improvement haven that shook off the sawdust and embraced the unconventional in ways that didn't include slapping googly eyes on every two-by-four. That's why the San Antonio Express-News' $hopGirl can cite a unique selection of Curly Girl wall hangings, hooded towels, and Texas cookbooks beside traditional tools and housewares sourced from Ace Hardware. An epic spread of Benjamin Moore paints and Breville kitchen products create an ocular feast for fixer-uppers as handcrafted soaps and fragrant candles ignite olfactory senses. Seasoned staffers roam the aisles, touting talents that include knife sharpening, key cutting, and lamp repair in addition to several other services.

When 16-year-old Roger Soler crossed the finish line first at the Peruvian National Junior Championship, his victory marked the beginning of a love affair with running. At age 18, he set a Peruvian record in the 1500-meter and eventually brought his talents to the U.S., where he competed in the 5000-meter race at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Through it all, Roger nurtured a genuine fondness for running that blossomed into a full-fledged passion when he opened the first Soler's Sports more than two decades ago.

Today, Soler's Sports boasts four locations staffed by athletes with real-life experience in biking and running and was awarded a spot on Running Insight's Top 50 Running Stores of 2011. Staffers tend to customers on an individual basis, guaranteeing sneakers to accommodate gaits and bikes to fit bodies based on detailed analyses. Once employees have profiled the perfect shoe or bike, they help patrons find them, searching through the store’s stock, which includes brands such as Ridley Bikes, Vibram FiveFingers, Vitalsox, and Spibelt. Patrons can test-drive new kicks and wheels at the store's group runs and rides.