Ventura County Nurseries

Nurseries in Ventura and Ventura County

Home Sweet Home

The begin­ning of the journey

I believe Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com may have scooped the national gar­den mag­a­zines on this one. Jo O’Connell, an inter­na­tion­ally known botanist, owner of Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery and author­ity on Aus­tralian plants, was kind enough to share these pho­tos of a project she worked on recently. Her client, Amy Gold­man, is the author of The Heir­loom Tomato — from Gar­den to Table, a book with a promi­nent place in my library. Ms. Gold­man is also the chair of the board of the Seed Savers Exchange. Ms. Gold­man recently com­pleted a con­ser­va­tory on her prop­erty in upstate New York.

The new con­ser­va­tory from across the duck pond

Ms. Goldman’a newly built, gor­geous con­ser­va­tory was in need of a col­lec­tion of Mediter­ranean plants; to this end she dis­patched her archi­tect Tom Pritchard to the West Coast. He pur­chased many at Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery and Jo was put in charge of their safe deliv­ery from the West Coast to the East Coast. She also super­vised the instal­la­tion, below.

Home sweet Home

On the Web

  • 924: UC Irvine Arboretum/​Sat­ur­day Plant Sale (9498245833)
  • 924: Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild Flow­ers and Native Plants Hum­ming­bird Orna­ment Work­shop, No Lawn Work­shop (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
  • 924: Ship­ley Nature Cen­ter, Orange County — Annual Native Plant Sale/​Composting work­shop (www​.ship​ley​na​ture​.org)

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: 910: Har­vest Basics, Leave your lawn talks (www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)
  • The Theodore Payne Foundation/​East Val­ley: 910 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: 910: Rain Bar­rels and Rain Gar­dens (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
  • Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gardens/​East Val­ley: 97 Chi­nese and Japan­ese Gar­dens and 98 Hawaii’s Trop­i­cal Gardens
  • City Farm­ers Nursery/​San Diego: Get­ting Started on Yeast Breads (www​.city​farm​er​snurs​ery​.com)

Herbal Magic

Caitlin Bergman at work

If you ever wanted to go back to the days where you learned some­thing good and true and had fun doing it, this is your chance. Sort of like Girl or Boy Scouts. There is not enough of that going around in our adult world! Caitlin Bergman of Say Per­ma­cul­ture will be teach­ing a spe­cial work­shop on herbal body prod­ucts at the Los Ange­les County Arbore­tum and Botanic Gar­den on Sun­day, August 28. This is the course description:

Join us for a fun and relax­ing sum­mer evening mak­ing home­made, premier-​quality body care prod­ucts. For a sliver of the cost of nor­mal shelf prod­ucts, we will be cre­at­ing blends uti­liz­ing sim­ple, organic, safe ingre­di­ents suited to your own per­sonal skin care needs. You’ll get to take home the prod­ucts you make, along­with the knowl­edge to keep on mak­ing more!

You will receive a brief back­ground on cre­at­ing herbal prepa­ra­tions as well as spe­cial back­yard herbs suit­able for use on your beau­ti­ful, glow­ing body. Most of class is hands-​on, craft­ing prod­ucts with like-​minded par­tic­i­pants. Did you know that every­thing that comes into con­tact with our skin, such as mois­tur­iz­ers, per­fumes, and hair­care prod­ucts, gets absorbed into our bodies? Learn to make your own healthy, reju­ve­nat­ing skin care kit com­plete with: body balm, masque, scrub, hydrosol, and more! Please come pre­pared to make and sam­ple our creations.

Caitlin Bergman is a Per­ma­cul­ture Designer, Con­sul­tant, and Edu­ca­tor who has a grow­ing fol­low­ing of peo­ple who love tak­ing her empow­er­ing courses. Hold­ing a degree in Botany, and hav­ing served as the Arboretum’s Prop­a­ga­tion­ist and Per­ma­cu­ture Cura­tor, for the last decade Caitlin has also been con­sult­ing as an Herbal­ist. She totally enjoys guid­ing oth­ers into the world of plants and incor­po­rat­ing them into every­day lifestyles.

I think that about says it all. The class will be held at the Arbore­tum, 301 North Bald­win Avenue, Arca­dia, CA 91007 on August 28 from 4 — 7 pm. There are a few spaces left; con­tact Jill Berry at Jill.​Berry@​arboretum.​org or phone her at 6268214624. Caitlin’s web­site is at www​.sayper​ma​cul​ture​.com.

On the Web:

  • Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery is fea­tur­ing a great look­ing orna­men­tal shrub, Adenan­thos Cunea­tus aka Coastal Jug Flower. Click in their link on the right to see it; go to dis­cover on the right side of the web­site. (www​.aus​tralian​plants​.com)
  • Wei­d­ners Gar­dens in Encini­tas (under San Diego County Nurs­eries) is hav­ing their Annual Sale 8/​20 — 9/​5. (www​.wei​d​ners​.com)
  • Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery in Ven­tura is hav­ing a sem­i­nar on Fall in the Organic Veg­gie Gar­den, Sat­ur­day Aug. 20 –free with pre-​registration

the answer is.…Jimson Weed!!!!

AKA loco weed!

How can some­thing so attrac­tive be so evil? (rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, just check out the news lately). I posted this photo, taken on my beach wan­der­ings, a week ago, call­ing it the mys­tery flower and request­ing it’s name. My loyal read­ers were on it imme­di­ately. Turns out it is the extremely poi­so­nous jim­son weed, also known as devil’s trum­pet, hell’s bells, locoweed, stinkweed and jamestown weed (talk about demo­niz­ing a plant!). In humans, the symp­toms of poi­son­ing include delir­ium, bizarre and vio­lent behav­ior and severe amne­sia. Treat­ment almost always requires hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. It is also poi­so­nous to ani­mals but less so.

Inter­est­ingly enough, accord­ing to jim​son​weed​.org, “This small, poi­so­nous bush had long been used med­i­c­i­nally, crim­i­nally, and for recre­ational pur­poses through­out the world, long before the set­tlers at Jamestown came across it. It was used by thieves in India and Rus­sia, where they used a mix­ture of ground up seeds and water to inca­pac­i­tate and then rob their unsus­pect­ing vic­tims. A reli­gious cult in India used it to mur­der peo­ple, and the plant was used as a poi­son in Renais­sance Europe.”

This is also the flower that so inspired painter Geor­gia O’Keefe. That makes sense, as it flour­ishes in the New Mex­ico deserts where she painted. I will be going to the Life Guard sta­tion to turn in this offen­sive mem­ber of the plant com­mu­nity. It will not be planted in my garden!

Jim­son Weed by Geor­gia O’Keefe 1932

On the Web:

  • Sat­ur­day, 86: Con­tainer Gar­den­ing with native plants at Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild­flow­ers and Native Plants (www​.Theodor​e​payne​.org) under East Val­ley nurseries
  • Sat­ur­day, 86: Using Native Plants and suc­cu­lents in pots class at Nopal­ito Nurs­ery (under Ven­tura Nurs­eries) www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com
  • Free jazz con­certs with admis­sion at Des­canso Gar­dens this month (www​.Des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)
  • Mon­day, 88: Cre­at­ing and keep­ing a sus­tain­able land­scape talk at San Diego Hor­ti­cul­tural Soci­ety meet­ing (www​.sdhort​soc​.org)
  • 810: Mys­tic flo­rals class (sounds pretty neat from descrip­tion) at Sher­man Library and Gar­dens (www​.slgar​dens​.org)
  • Weidner’s Gar­dens in Encini­tas has a lot of fun pro­mo­tions going on right now..(www.weidners.com) San Diego Nurs­ery section

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