Posts Tagged ‘Laguna nursery’

My home office

It seems that the peo­ple who would most love to access the gar­den­ing web — you and I — some­times have the hard­est time. Web flu­ency does not come nat­u­rally to those of us over a cer­tain age. But that shouldn’t stop anybody…we are all teach­able and it is so empow­er­ing to learn com­puter skills — I can attest to that. I have been told that the tablet type com­put­ers — such as the Ipad and Android — are eas­ier and intu­itive for email­ing and web surf­ing. Apple is very good at teach­ing their cus­tomers how to use their prod­ucts at free sem­i­nars at the Apple stores. Def­i­nitely worth look­ing into! Iron­i­cally, if you are read­ing this you are obvi­ously on the inter­net already; maybe you could encour­age some­body else? The fol­low­ing are favorite nurs­ery web­sites, gar­den­ing web­sites and blogs:

Web­sites:

SoCal​Nurs​ery​Plants​.com:

Spe­cialty nurseries:

Ven­tura County:

• Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery.….www​.aus​tralian​plants​.com
• Matil­ija Nurs­ery.….www​.matil​i​ja​nurs​ery​.com (natives, spe­cial­iz­ing in irises)
• Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery.….www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com
• Otto and Sons.….www​.ottoand​sons​-nurs​ery​.com (a lov­ing grower of every kind of rose)

Los Angeles/​East Valley:

• Cal­i­for­nia Cac­tus Cen­ter.….www​.cac​tus​cen​ter​.com
• Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion.….www​.theodor​e​payne​.org (native plants)

Los Angeles/​West Valley

• Papaya Tree Nurs­ery.…..www​.papay​a​treenurs​ery​.com (spe­cial­iz­ing in fruit­ing trees and shrubs)

Los Angeles

• Rolling Greens Nursery/​Culver City.….www​.rolling​green​snurs​ery​.com (orchids, indoor plants, containers)
• Ran­cho Santa Ana Botan­i­cal Gar­dens Grow Native Nurs­ery @ the West Los Ange­les Vet­er­ans Cen­ter.….www​.rsabg​.org (native plants)

Orange County:

• Tree of Life Nurs­ery.…www​.cal​i​for​ni​a​na​tive​plants​.com (native plants)
• Upland Nurs­ery.…www​.upland​nurs​ery​.com (350 vari­eties of plumeria)
• Laguna Nurs­ery.….www​.lagu​na​nurs​ery​.net (unusual foun­tains and antiques)
• Bar­rels and Branches.….www​.bar​rel​sand​branches​.com (Espe­cially good sea­sonal displays)

San Diego County

Cedros Gar­dens.….www​.cedros​gar​dens​.com (spe­cial native plant section)

• Botan­i­cal Partners/​Bamboo Head­quar­ters.….www​.botan​i​cal​part​ners​.com (experts on bamboo)
• Pearson’s Gar­dens and Herb Farm.….www​.pear​son​s​gar​dens​.com (every kind of herb imaginable)
• Buena Creek Gar­dens.…www​.bue​nacreek​gar​dens​.com (demon­stra­tion gardens)
• Green Gar­dens Nurs­ery.….www​.sdgreen​gar​dens​.com (great ser­vice and­land­scap­ing help)
• Simpson’s Gar­den Town Nurs­ery.….www​.simp​son​snurs​ery​.com (includes avin­tage car museum)

Great Regional Nurseries:

Ven­tura County:

• Island View Nurs­ery.….www​.island​viewnurs​ery​.com
• Sea­side Gar­dens.….www​.sea​side​-gar​dens​.com

Los Angeles/​East Valley

• Burkard Nurs­ery.….www​.burkard​nurs​eries​.com

Los Angeles/​West Valley

• Sper­ling Nurs­ery.….www​.sper​lingnurs​ery​.com

Los Ange­les

• Marina del Rey Gar­den Cen­ter.….www​.mari​na​gar​den​cen​ter​.com

Orange County

• Roger’s Gar­dens.….www​.rogers​gar​dens​.com
• Plant Depot.….www​.plant​de​pot​.com
• Vil­lage Nurs­eries.….www​.vil​la​genurs​erieslc​.com

San Diego County

• Anderson’s La Costa Nurs­ery.….www​.ander​son​sla​costa​nurs​ery​.com
• Wal­ter Ander­sen Nurs­ery.….www​.wal​teran​der​sen​.com

More Web­sites

www​.blotan​i​cal​.com.….gar­den blogs from all over the world

www​.sun​set​.com.….includes Sun­set Mag­a­zines “plant finder”

www​.fine​gar​den​ing​.com.….includes arti­cles from the magazine

www​.authen​ticprovence​.com.….beau­ti­ful Euro­pean gar­den accessories

www​.flor​agrubb​.com.….great ideas for con­tain­ers and flower arrangements

www​.gar​den​visit​.com.….gar­dens to visit from all over the world

www​.back​yardgar​dener​.com/​f​o​r​ums.….forums on every topic imaginable

www​.dirt​cou​ture​.com.….cat­a­log of hand­made items

www​.gar​den​guides​.com.….every­thing garden

www​.cal​-IPC​.org.….info on inva­sive plants

www​.rar​eforms​.com.….where food,art and gar­den­ing meet — great photos

www​.ros​alind​creasy​.com.….edi­ble land­scap­ing — great photos

www​.plant​na​tive​.org.….info on native planting

www​.thewil​low​farm​.com.….every­thing wil­low includ­ing fencing

www​.straw​bale​gar​dens​.com.….how to make a straw bale garden

www​.gar​den​con​ser​vancy​.com.….source for info on Open Days gar­den tours

www​.mas​ter​gar​den​erssandiego​.com.….access to services

www​.plantfinder​.sun​set​.com.….Sun­set Mag­a­zine plantfinder

www​.mon​rovia​.com.….search their plant cat­a­log using spe­cific criteria

Blogs

(n.) Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a pub­licly acces­si­ble per­sonal jour­nal for an indi­vid­ual. Often updated daily, blogs may reflect the per­son­al­ity of the author. Blogs are dif­fer­ent from web­sites as the con­tent changes fre­quently based on when the writer pub­lishes their post, or con­tent. These are some of my favorite gar­den­ing blogs:

www​.far​m​girl​fare​.com

www​.freshdirt​.com (Sun­set Magazine)

www​.chance​ofrain​.com

www​.urban​gar​dens​.com

www​.acces​so​ra​tor​.com

www​.mich​blog​ging​.blogspot​.com

www​.gar​den​rant​.com

www​.dirt​du​jour​.com

www​.ram​blingLA​.blogspot​.com

www​.the​gal​lop​ing​gar​dener​.blogspot​.com (gar­den travel)

www​.whiteon​rice​cou​ple​.com

A mossy foun­tain at Laguna Nursery

This is a dif­fi­cult post to write because most nurs­eries are spe­cial in some way. Every com­mu­nity needs and deserves a gen­er­al­ized “gar­den cen­ter” for obvi­ous rea­sons (espe­cially since Tar­get has closed all of theirs — yea!). So I’m not nec­es­sar­ily talk­ing about ser­vice, selec­tion or price. With des­ti­na­tion nurs­eries some­thing more inde­fin­able is usu­ally in play, start­ing with the pas­sion of the owner. Most of the nurs­ery men and women I’ve met love what they do — which is lucky for us in this harsh eco­nomic cli­mate. But it is much harder to spe­cial­ize because it cuts down on clien­tele. So, need Aus­tralian plants? Go to Jo O’Connell’s Aus­tralian Native Plants Nurs­ery in Ojai. Jo pro­vides Aus­tralian plants to the Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, among many oth­ers. Want your roses grown locally and accli­ma­tized — Otto and Sons in Fill­more has an enor­mous selec­tion. How about a cus­tom top­i­ary spelling out your name? Get it at Eden Nurs­ery in Orange County. Two nurs­eries that spe­cial­ize in jaw drop­ping foun­tains, planter arrange­ments, orchids, gar­den fur­ni­ture and acces­sories: Laguna Nurs­ery in Orange County and Rolling Greens Nurs­ery in Cul­ver City. Upland Nurs­ery in Orange County has 350 vari­eties of plume­ria. Does your spouse want to see a phe­nom­e­nal car col­lec­tion while you shop for petu­nias? The only place for that is Simpson’S Gar­den Nurs­ery in San Diego County. Also in San Diego County: Botan­i­cal Part­ners with every bam­boo imag­in­able, and Jun­gle Music for collector’s palms. The own­ers of these nurs­eries (Ralph Evans and Phil Bergman, respec­tively) will give you help in decid­ing what will do best in your gar­den — they want you to suc­ceed and come back for more. Of course, that is true of all nurs­eries, large and small, gen­eral or specialized.

I have a “Des­ti­na­tion Nurs­ery” list­ing at the bot­tom of my cat­e­gories on Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com. For more infor­ma­tion on each nurs­ery, go to the cat­e­gory for that nursery.

A mossy foun­tain at Laguna Nursery

Ruben Flo­res pulled Laguna Nurs­ery back from the brink of extinc­tion. The 50 year old nurs­ery on Pacific Coast High­way in Laguna Beach was fated to be torn down and… (stop here if your are faint-​hearted) turned into a com­mer­cial stor­age facil­ity. Basi­cally Ruben couldn’t let that hap­pen! So he bought the prop­erty and kept the orig­i­nal name. Laguna Nurs­ery is now stocked to the gills with plants, flow­ers, foun­tains, con­tain­ers, pots, art, antiques and chan­de­liers, all of which meet the high stan­dards of his dis­cern­ing eye. This place is worth a spe­cial trip to Laguna Beach just to wan­der about and get ideas from the cre­ative vignettes Ruben has cre­ated. One “room” has a car­pet of “plant” mate­r­ial that is both prac­ti­cal and imprac­ti­cal at the same time. Mainly it just looks great. I have my eye on a 19th cen­tury sink that is straight out of “Gos­ford Park” — though first I’ll need to find a sugar daddy ! A lovely foun­tain drip­ping with moss mim­ics a Monet paint­ing. Every­where you look there is magic!

Ruben gives back to the com­mu­nity in another way. Sat­ur­day morn­ings at 10 a.m. he gives infor­mal walk­ing tours of the neigh­bor­hood gar­dens. The tours are free and last about 90 min­utes (call to check though). He wants the pub­lic to see the plants they buy in a mature set­ting, and who could argue with that.

www​.Lagu​na​nurs​ery​.net