Archive for the ‘Destination Nursery’ Category

Now this is a bicycle!

I was impa­tiently antic­i­pat­ing Flora Grubb Gar­dens and was not dis­ap­pointed! I was in fact wowed by this ulti­mate urban gar­den resource. Set in an indus­trial area of down­town San Fran­cisco, Flora’s green king­dom  encom­passes a soar­ing indus­trial build­ing filled with witty dis­plays, ver­ti­cal gar­dens and unusual plants and con­tain­ers. Ser­vices offered include cut­ting edge flo­ral designs (suc­cu­lent wed­ding bou­quet, any­one?), gar­den design and main­te­nance and a palm bro­ker­age. Flora Grubb Gar­dens has a ter­rific web­site and newslet­ter: check it out @ Flor​agrubb​.com. She also offers sem­i­nars and speakers.

Bot­tle tree @ RBG

I am vis­it­ing my brother Scott and his wife Kate in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. They live in Wal­nut Creek, about 25 miles east of San Fran­cisco and at the foot of Mount Dia­blo (site of a recent con­tro­versy con­cern­ing the name “Mt. Devil”, but that’s another story). There is a trea­sure right down the street from their house, the very first project of the revered Gar­den Con­ser­vancy.  That would be Ruth Ban­croft Gar­dens, ded­i­cated to the  preser­va­tion of as fine a col­lec­tion of water con­serv­ing plants as you will find on the planet. Started by it’s epony­mous founder in 1971, the 3 acre gar­den is located on a fruit farm owned by the Ban­croft fam­ily since the 1880’s. I have always found suc­cu­lents easy to love for their form, color, ease of pro­poga­tion and most of all archi­tec­tural good looks. The suc­cu­lent and cacti col­lec­tion @ RBG is thrilling for it’s con­trast­ing tex­tures, forms and col­ors, espe­cially in the spring.

The bot­tle tree (Brachy­chi­ton Rupestris) shown above is lit­er­ally a giant suc­cu­lent. Using it’s trunk for water stor­age, the Aus­tralian native  is slow grow­ing up to 40′ in height; it doesn’t dis­play the bot­tle shape until 15 years along. The good news is that if you have more money than time the bot­tle tree can be trans­planted very easily.

Ruth​ban​croft​gar​den​.org

A mossy foun­tain at Laguna Nursery

This is a dif­fi­cult post to write because most nurs­eries are spe­cial in some way. Every com­mu­nity needs and deserves a gen­er­al­ized “gar­den cen­ter” for obvi­ous rea­sons (espe­cially since Tar­get has closed all of theirs — yea!). So I’m not nec­es­sar­ily talk­ing about ser­vice, selec­tion or price. With des­ti­na­tion nurs­eries some­thing more inde­fin­able is usu­ally in play, start­ing with the pas­sion of the owner. Most of the nurs­ery men and women I’ve met love what they do — which is lucky for us in this harsh eco­nomic cli­mate. But it is much harder to spe­cial­ize because it cuts down on clien­tele.  So, need Aus­tralian plants? Go to Jo O’Connell’s Aus­tralian Native Plants Nurs­ery in Ojai. Jo pro­vides Aus­tralian plants to the Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, among many oth­ers. Want your roses grown locally and accli­ma­tized — Otto and Sons in Fill­more has an enor­mous selec­tion. How about a cus­tom top­i­ary spelling out your name? Get it at Eden Nurs­ery in Orange County. Two nurs­eries that spe­cial­ize in jaw drop­ping foun­tains, planter arrange­ments, orchids, gar­den fur­ni­ture and acces­sories: Laguna Nurs­ery in Orange County and Rolling Greens Nurs­ery in Cul­ver City. Upland Nurs­ery in Orange County has 350 vari­eties of plume­ria. Does your spouse want to see a phe­nom­e­nal car col­lec­tion while you shop for petu­nias? The only place for that is Simpson’S Gar­den Nurs­ery in San Diego County. Also in San Diego County: Botan­i­cal Part­ners with every bam­boo imag­in­able, and Jun­gle Music for collector’s palms. The own­ers of these nurs­eries (Ralph Evans and Phil Bergman, respec­tively) will give you help in decid­ing what will do best in your gar­den — they want you to suc­ceed and come back for more. Of course, that is true of all nurs­eries, large and small, gen­eral or specialized.

I have a “Des­ti­na­tion Nurs­ery” list­ing at the bot­tom of my cat­e­gories on Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com. For more infor­ma­tion on each nurs­ery, go to the cat­e­gory for that nursery.

Tree of Life Nursery

If you are like me, you have fan­ta­sized about work­ing at a spe­cial nurs­ery — or hav­ing your own. Tree of Life Nurs­ery is just such a spe­cial place for me. Located on 40 acres off Ortega High­way in San Juan Capis­trano, TOLN was started over thirty years ago by own­ers Mike Evans and Jeff Bohn. Their mis­sion was to prop­a­gate Cal­i­for­nia native plants with the view to return­ing Cal­i­for­nia habi­tat to its nat­ural form. Since then TOLN has become the largest native plant sup­plier in the state. Both the set­ting and the build­ings on the prop­erty are won­der­ful. The staff  “has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in eco­log­i­cal restora­tion, habi­tat enhance­ment and authen­tic land­scap­ing.”  Tree of Life natives are made avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic through the charm­ing Casa “La Paz” Plant and Book Store. They also offer ter­rific work­shops, includ­ing: Native Designs: Color Year Round in the Cal­i­for­nia Native Gar­den (April 3), Native Design: Cre­ate a Hum­ming­bird Con­tainer (April 10), Native Design: Incor­po­rat­ing Desert Plants (April 17), Native Design: Design Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess (April 24), and Native Design: Plant Tour of Nurs­ery Gar­dens (May 1). They also have a 4 part work­shop in May on how to get rid of your lawn. For more infor­ma­tion go to their web­site: www​.Cal​i​for​ni​a​na​tive​plants​.com.