Posts Tagged ‘moss’

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.

Moss grows in Sonoma County in North­ern California

I’m in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (Wal­nut Creek) vis­it­ing my brother Scott and his wife Kate over the hol­i­days. Yes­ter­day we spent the night in Healds­burg at the Grape Leaf Inn (www​.grape​leafinn​.com). It rains a lot more up here than in SoCal, there­fore you see a lot of moss and no bougainvil­lea. Moss seemed a good sub­ject for win­ter; noth­ing else is thriv­ing up here right now. I have zero under­stand­ing of moss, as I have vir­tu­ally no shade in my SoCal gar­den. My research yielded the fol­low­ing facts. There are 15,000 species world­wide. The fuzzy green stuff thrives in acid rich or com­pacted or shaded or poorly drained soil. It’s also a great soil builder requir­ing no mow­ing, dehatch­ing, fer­til­iz­ing or pes­ti­cides — but plenty of weed­ing. Moss has no vas­cu­lar sys­tem or roots but absorbs water directly from the air or thru rainfall.

Now this is the fun stuff: stored dry moss can be dor­mant for years and come back with water. To plant moss, remove all plants and sprin­kle the soil with pow­dered sul­fur or even pow­dered milk. Lay patches of moss or sprin­kle moss spores onto wet ground and irri­gate reg­u­larly. You can also make a moss milk­shake by mix­ing half moss and half but­ter­milk or beer in a blender. This con­coc­tion can be painted on prac­ti­cally any­thing porous from bricks to rocks, ter­ra­cotta, cement pots or troughs — pro­vide shade — you should see results in about a month.

Sources for moss (local SoCal nurs­eries will sell it too!): www​.mossacres​.com, www​.out​side​pride​.com, www​.springhill​.com

If any­one is trav­el­ing to wine coun­try and needs sug­ges­tions, drop me a line — what I don’t know my brother does!