Ventura County Nurseries
Nurseries in Ventura and Ventura County
I believe Socalnurseryplants.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.
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.
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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 626−821−4624. Caitlin’s website is at www.saypermaculture.com.
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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 jimsonweed.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!
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