Archive for the ‘Nursery Information’ Category

Func­tional sculp­ture at Gar­den Temple

This is the kind of store, a life chang­ing sort of store, that makes me want to open the same busi­ness so I could spend all of my time there. That is kind of what hap­pened with David Mills, who with wife Mari, founded Gar­den Tem­ple in in Stu­dio City in 2002. Prior to open­ing the show­room David trav­eled the world buy­ing and sell­ing eth­nic art, includ­ing stone basins from Cen­tral Amer­ica. It seemed a log­i­cal next step to install pumps, but the logis­tics are more com­plex. “We get the stone in var­i­ous states of com­ple­tion from India, Guata­mala, Vietnam.…than the foun­tains are fin­ished locally. “I love being in a cre­ative busi­ness that offers a bit of nature in the city,”  says David. “I grew up in the val­ley and miss the open spaces. This is a neigh­bor­hood space. We wel­come peo­ple to come in and wan­der around, like the fam­ily with small chil­dren who come almost every weekend.”

The sim­ple, attrac­tive forms David designs and fab­ri­cates facil­i­tate water flow and fall. “We also install and main­tain our foun­tains, and we are very safety con­scious. It’s also impor­tant that the parts under­neath that you don’t see are durable  and made of high qual­ity mate­r­ial.” Gar­den Temple’s large out­door show­room and indoor area show­cases hand chis­eled stone troughs, basins and blocks, cop­per ves­sels, exotic indoor plants and planters.

Gar­den Tem­ple, 13055 Ven­tura Blvd., Stu­dio City, 91604 /​ 818−783−0079 /​ 10 — 5 /​ 7 days a week /​ www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com

On the web: Burkard Nurs­ery in Pasadena is hav­ing their Labor Day sale Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 3 thru Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 6. All items 30% off. (626) 796‑4355 /​ www​.burkard​nurs​eries​.com /​ More infor­ma­tion in Find a nurs­ery under East Val­ley and beyond.

Wild Wings slo­gan: We can help you make your back yard come alive!

My friends Tom and Jamie recently took me to a killer store: Wild Wings. It’s their source for some pretty exotic bird seed. Started by part­ners Bon­nie and Scott a year ago, Wild Wings is a beau­ti­fully designed and thought­ful store. “Scott has loved birds his entire life” reveals Bon­nie. “We wanted a busi­ness that would recon­nect peo­ple to nature.” They also focus on chil­dren, hop­ing to inspire them to go out­side instead of being glued to their elec­tron­ics. “Kids espe­cially enjoy our but­ter­fly habi­tat” Bon­nie says. “We also carry frog and ant habi­tats.” They are very knowl­edgable about ways to attract all sorts of wildlife to your city back­yard. Other offer­ings include :

• cus­tom blended bird seed
• bird feed­ers, houses and baths
• toys, unique gifts and gar­den accents
• field trail guides and books

We are so lucky to have this store in SoCal! They are located at 4337 Wood­man Avenue in Sher­man Oaks (91423) near Ven­tura Blvd with easy park­ing in the back. Phone @ 818−995−0022. Hours are Tues — Fri­day 10 — 6, Sat 10 — 5, Sun 12 — 4, closed Mon­day. www​.Wild​wingsLA​.com.

An announce­ment from Sheri­dan Gar­dens in Bur­bank: This Sat­ur­day, August 28th at 9:30am, is our Plant­ing Now for Fall, Win­ter and Spring color class. It is being hosted by Chris Van Deusen. Also our sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Kel­logg Gar­den Prod­ucts will be talk­ing about ways to improve soil prepa­ra­tion. 818−841−8845  www​.sheri​dan​gar​dens​.com

Cal­i­for­nia native plants

I recently toured Matil­ija Nurs­ery with owner Bob Suss­man, who started his grow­ing busi­ness about 16 years ago. Nes­tled among the orchards of Moor­park, this SoCal nurs­ery car­ries a choice vari­ety of native plants, and  native and hybridized irises. Bob has pro­vided Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com with the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion about native plant growing:

What to do now???  The end of the sum­mer dog days.……

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the most chal­leng­ing and demor­al­iz­ing time for a native gar­den, espe­cially a new native gar­den. The rea­son for this is that a native gar­den, or any gar­den for that mat­ter, always has a com­po­nent of trial and error.  Most of us tend to focus on the “error”,  what didn’t work and what died?  This was indeed the case at a recent con­sul­ta­tion I went to last week where the new gar­den was going through its rough first year.

Most native plants flower intensely in spring but by sum­mer things are going the other way.  There are non-​​violent solu­tions to all of this and things to do like main­te­nance and planning.

You can start cut­ting back things that “need it”. Things that need it are salvia’s, sphear­al­cea, encelia, grasses and even matil­ija pop­pies but not cean­othus or man­zanita. Clear out leaf lit­ter except under oaks — my pref­er­ence. Weed and spread mulch. That will give every­thing a much neater and cleaner look while keep­ing the ground cooler and plants greener.

Plan­ning! What croaked and what didn’t? What looks good dur­ing the sum­mer heat? Most casu­al­ties occur in the first year.  While there are many rea­sons for plant casu­al­ties, it’s gen­er­ally “wrong plant, wrong place”, but you may not know this until the first sum­mer. Then you find out.  What to do?

Repeat the suc­cesses and not the fail­ures. Look at those things that did well and plant more of those. Go to the native plant nurs­ery (Matil­ija Nurs­ery) or botan­i­cal gar­den in summer/​fall and see what looks nice and in flower!!!!.  Then, plant the plants that are both flow­er­ing and/​or look nice.

Flow­er­ing plants put the focus of your eye on the flow­ers and not the part of the land­scape going to seed or in to dor­mancy.   Here’s a par­tial list of what is flow­er­ing now: lessin­gia, ero­gonum grande rubescens ie red buck­wheat (fin­ish­ing now), Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, chilop­sis lin­earus (desert wil­low), mala­cotham­nus nutalii (bush mal­low) and abu­tilon palmeri.

Matil­ija Bob will now do con­sults for about $100 per visit depend­ing on where you live and you get a 20% dis­count cer­tifi­cate good for 60 days on nurs­ery plants to boot. Way bet­ter and cheaper than a psychologist!

Go to www​.matil​i​ja​nurs​ery​.com for more arti­cles like the one above.

An owl at home

Is there any­one who doesn’t love the mag­nif­i­cent, noc­tur­nal owl ? (except for rodents!) Owls are such iconic and highly spe­cial­ized birds, and yet I have seen so few of them in my life­time. See­ing an owl is an event. With this in mind I vis­ited the Hun­gry Owl (www​.hun​gry​owl​.org/), a web­site based in Marin, Cal­i­for­nia devoted to the preser­va­tion and pro­tec­tion of owls. This orga­ni­za­tion is seri­ous about owls. Some to the things you will learn: owls are on the decline, espe­cially in the Mid­west; there is no safe rat poi­son; owls can con­sume a third of their body weight per night; and a fam­ily of 5 can con­sume 3000 rodents in breed­ing sea­son. The Hun­gry Owl Project sells owl boxes, plans for owl boxes, bat houses and blue­bird boxes, and will instruct you on exactly how to use them.

On another note:   On the web @ http://www​.rich​mond​grows​.org/: A seed lend­ing library in Rich­mond, Ca., north­east of San Fran­cisco, that is oper­ated out of a pub­lic library.

Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery In Ven­tura will be hold­ing the fol­low­ing talk this Sat­ur­day, August 21, 2010, Native Plants for Park­ing Strips… Ugly Title, Beau­ti­ful Results, with Bar­bara Eisen­stein, gar­den blog­ger and hor­ti­cul­tur­ist. Go to www​.Nopali​tonurs​ery​.com.