Posts Tagged ‘tree’

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

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.