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Ventura County Nurseries

Nurseries in Ventura and Ventura County

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A typically rainy day in Dublin

The trip to Ire­land and Eng­land I just returned from made me want to become a bet­ter pho­tog­ra­pher. There were many chal­lenges on this trip in terms of film­ing, and of course, return­ing with good pho­tos is very impor­tant for my web­site. One of the inher­ent dif­fi­cul­ties of this trip was the weather. It was sel­dom sunny for the 2 weeks I was there…mostly over­cast with occa­sional rain. For­tu­nately I can change my pho­tos with the Apple iPhoto pro­gram, which I do all the time. Real pho­tog­ra­phers don’t do this, they manip­u­late the cam­era to get all the ele­ments, i.e. the expo­sure, con­trast, def­i­n­i­tion, etc. that go into mak­ing an artis­tic shot. My objec­tive is to learn how to do this.

If you are going to the Olympics, the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion might come in handy. I ran into a major prob­lem with adap­tors. After a few days in Ire­land, I needed to recharge my cam­era and iPhone bat­ter­ies, using an adap­tor bor­rowed from the hotel. It blew out my charger and my sister’s hair appli­ance; it just plain didn’t work on the IPhone, and the results were the same with other adap­tors. So for most of the trip I was with­out my cam­era. I bought an adap­tor and cord at the Apple store in Lon­don and used my Iphone cam­era for the rest of the trip. Luck­ily I had that, because I would have had to buy a camera…everything was so pic­turesque. The scene above of the Tem­ple Bar, one of Dublin’s old­est (esta. 1840), is just one of many; how do they keep every­thing so pris­tine and beau­ti­ful there? And why can’t we do the same?

Announc­ing Socal­nurs­ery­plants new QUESTION AND ANSWER FEATURE in the right mar­gin of the home page.….…

On the web:

  • Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery in Ven­tura has many low priced or free sem­i­nars; go to www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com.
  • Ship­ley Nature Cen­ter in Hunt­ing­ton Beach (www​.ship​ley​na​ture​.org) announces their Cool Sum­mer Nights 2012 Pro­gram every Thurs­day Night in July and August; they are open until 8 pm with spe­cial pro­grams on bees, rap­tors, crit­ters, to name a few.
  • Plant Depot, San Juan Capis­trano, has a coupon on their web­site @ www​.plant​de​pot​news​.com
  • The Los Ange­les Arbore­tum is offer­ing “Sav­ing Water in your Gar­den”, a sem­i­nar by Laramee Haynes on June 9; go to www.arboretum.com..classes.

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Yea, it’s garden tour time

Ahh­h­h­hhh.… the time of the gar­den tours has finally arrived! Here are some of the best, from North to South:

There are many more tours than those I have listed, and all can be found on search engines. I just want to thank all the gar­den own­ers, clubs and orga­ni­za­tions who work so hard giv­ing us the oppor­tu­nity to be inspired by these won­der­ful gardens!

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Nifty gifts.….Made in the USA!

Thig­amotrope Satel­lites with Air Plants from Flora Grubb

Flora Grubb Gar­dens in San Fran­cisco is sell­ing this lit­tle gizmo at www​.flor​agrubb​.com. From their website:
Thig­motrope Satel­lite is the eas­i­est way to make a ver­ti­cal gar­den indoors. Just screw it in the wall and your tilland­sias have a styl­ish new home. Thigmotrope Satel­lite is a steel tri­pod with a threaded base, designed to be a screw-​in perch for tilland­sia air plants.
These can be pur­chased with or with­out the tilland­sia. Tilland­sia, aka air plants, don’t require soil and have very mod­est water and light require­ments. For more infor­ma­tion on tilland­sia go to www​.air​plantsup​ply​.com.

A close up thigamotrope

You may remem­ber the gor­geous “Pumpcu­lents” designed by Laura Eubanks of San Diego and fea­tured on Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com in Octo­ber (see Archives — San Diego Nurseries-Laura’s pump­kins). Laura is at it again with these inno­v­a­tive suc­cu­lent orna­ments. She also is car­ry­ing hol­i­day pump­kins. Her web­site is www​.design4seren​ity​.com.

A Christ­mas orna­ment from Laura Eubanks

On the Web:

Aus­tralian Native Plants Nurs­ery (Ojai) is fea­tur­ing a very beau­ti­ful plant this week called Euca­lyp­tus “Moon Lagoon”. Owner Jo O’Connell also has a new ship­ment of books for hol­i­day gift­ing. Check out her web­site by click­ing on the but­ton to the right.

Atten­tion: Palm and Cycad lovers: Owner Phil Bergman of Jun­gle Music (Encini­tas) is offer­ing a very desir­able selec­tion of palms and cycads, many of them new to his nurs­ery. Some are col­lec­table; there are cold tol­er­ant plants on offer. Phil is very help­ful to begin­ners and will make sure you get the right plant for your needs. He is also well known to col­lec­tors, and car­ries spec­i­mens from all over the world. Go to www​.jun​gle​mu​sic​.net (619−291−4605) for pho­tos and info.

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A Low Country Plantation

A hunt­ing estate in the South Car­olina backwoods

Imag­ine my sur­prise when I dis­cov­ered a chap­ter on this home in the book Low­coun­try Plan­ta­tions Today, given to me by my pre­scient friend Lisa some years before. Last Sep­tem­ber my sis­ter Mary Lynn and I were on our way to go kayak­ing at the ACE Basin near Beau­fort, South Car­olina when we passed this home out in the mid­dle of nowhere. Sur­rounded by 100+ year old oaks, the estate includes gor­geous barns as well. Accord­ing to my Low­coun­try book it is called Bonny Hall Plan­ta­tion and was built circa 1897 on the Com­ba­hee River. Once owned by the Dou­ble­day pub­lish­ing fam­ily, it is now reputed to be the domain of a Hol­ly­wood pro­ducer. Som­er­set Maugham wrote The Razors Edge in the guest house there in the 1940’s.

Our kayak­ing guide, Kim, owns Beau­fort Kayak Tours (www​.Beau​fortkayak​tours​.com) with her hus­band David. She is a local as well as a nat­u­ral­ist and very well informed about the area. We kayaked in the swamps where the land was used for rice pro­duc­tion before the Civil War. Now a lot of the land is owned by wealthy fam­i­lies who use it for hunt­ing part time. This is a good thing because it pre­serves the land and saves it from development.

That’s us, kayak­ing away!

On the web:

Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery (click on web­site at right) fea­tures Euca­lyp­tus “Moon Lagoon”, a col­lec­table drought tol­er­ant shrub.

11⁄18: Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (San Marino) offers an all day Ranch sym­po­sium on urban agri­cul­ture. (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)

11⁄19:

  • Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (above): Thanks­giv­ing Flower Arrange­ment class.
  • Theodore Payne Native Plant Foun­da­tion (Sun Val­ley): 3 part Native Plant Design Sym­po­sium (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
  • Des­canso Gar­dens (La Canada): Her­itage Oak Walk (www​.des​canso​.org)
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College of Charleston

C of C campus

The first leg of my Sep­tem­ber trip to the Low Coun­try was booked through Road Scholar (for­merly Elder Hos­tel — I really love their new name). Road Scholar is a non­profit tour com­pany ded­i­cated to “life­long learn­ing”. They have a mouth­wa­ter­ing array of trips in their cat­a­log, many involv­ing some type of vol­un­teer­ing. My Charleston leg was orches­trated by the Col­lege of Charleston, a very old (1770) and won­der­ful pub­lic lib­eral arts and sci­ences school. We stayed in a lovely hotel, the Fran­cis Mar­ion, and ate our meals in the stu­dent din­ing room. That was so much fun; carbo load­ing and enjoy­ing the high energy of the stu­dents. In the morn­ing we would hear talks given by experts on the his­tory of the Civil War, Charleston, cook­ing, music and more; after­noons were devoted to sight­see­ing. Many of our group had enjoyed 6 or more trips with RS. I would have to give Road Scholar and Col­lege of Charleston an “A” for my experience!

The C of C cam­pus has amaz­ing old oaks

On the web:

Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery has a new ship­ment of books from…Australia! Click on their web­site to the right of this post.

Thurs­day, Novem­ber 10: Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (hunt​ing​ton​.org) Talk and sale on Native Trees for Native Gar­dens by Lili Singer

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 12:

  • Des­canso Gar­dens (Des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org) La Canada: Flower Mar­ket Tour, Fruit tree prun­ing and Fall color walk
  • San Diego Botanic Gar­den (sdb​gar​den​.org) San Diego County: Bromeliad Bash
  • Theodore Payne Native Plants and Flow­ers (theodor​e​payne​.org) Sun val­ley: Irri­ga­tion 101 and Native Plant Horticulture
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The Geography of Hope


Thanks to my friend Joan, this vista is one of count­less I saw in the Ghost Ranch area north­west of Santa Fe. I pho­tographed it from the park­ing lot of the Echo Canyon Amphithe­atre, below. Talk about an embarass­ment of riches!

Echo Canyon

One aspect I love about these areas is that they are not domes­ti­cated at all. There are plenty of rat­tlesnake and cougar warn­ing signs every­where. And one expects to come around the cor­ner and see the Lone Ranger and Tonto (he was my crush).

Way off topic, if you go to Santa Fe, you must go to Terre, the gor­geous restau­rant at Encan­tado Resort. They have these things called cheese tots — seri­ously one of the best things ever, and worth a trip to Santa Fe on their own. If you need any more incen­tive, the Albu­querque air­port is totally user friendly, has free wifi, and there is a train you can take from Albu­querque to Santa Fe (and back!).

We sim­ply need that wild coun­try avail­able to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reas­sur­ing our­selves of our san­ity as crea­tures, a part of the geog­ra­phy of hope.
 – Wal­lace Stegner

On the web:

  • Aus­tralian Native Plant Nursery/​Ventura: Plant of the week: Gre­vil­lia “Peaches and cream” — click on but­ton on right.
  • Des­canso Gardens/​East Val­ley: 9⁄10: Har­vest Basics, Leave your lawn talks (www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)
  • The Theodore Payne Foundation/​East Val­ley: 9⁄10 and 17: Chu­mash Heal­ing with Native Plants (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
  • Water­wise Botanicals/​Escondido: See coupon on web­site at www​.water​wise​b​otan​i​cals​.com
  • Deep Roots Gar­den Cen­ter, Man­hat­tan Beach offers dis­counts to var­i­ous gar­den clubs (www.deep-roots,net)
  • Los Ange­les Arboretum/​East Val­ley: 9⁄10: Rain Bar­rels and Rain Gar­dens (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
  • Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gardens/​East Val­ley: 9⁄7 Chi­nese and Japan­ese Gar­dens and 9⁄8 Hawaii’s Trop­i­cal Gardens
  • City Farm­ers Nursery/​San Diego: Get­ting Started on Yeast Breads (www​.city​farm​er​snurs​ery​.com)
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