Posts Tagged ‘socalnurseryplants.com’

Thig­amotrope Satel­lites with Air Plants from Flora Grubb

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.

A close up thigamotrope

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.

A park in Savannah

What am I grate­ful for? Most def­i­nitely that I get to travel as much as I do, and that I got to Greece and Egypt before those coun­tries imploded. Of course I love my fam­ily and try not to take them for granted. My world would def­i­nitely be a sad one with­out my dog chil­dren. And I love work­ing on my web­site; it wouldn’t exist with­out the 170+ nurs­eries of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Sat­ur­day is Small Busi­ness Day, a chance for us to sup­port our local nurs­eries, by def­i­n­i­tion small busi­nesses. I know you will do that Sat­ur­day and through­out the year!

This quote from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is by way of the Golden Gecko blog by Trey Pit­sen­berger at www​.gold​engecko​.com. Trey speaks for the inde­pen­dent nurseries.

Roger The Shrub­ber Speaks!

Roger the Shrub­ber: “Oh, what sad times are these when pass­ing ruf­fi­ans can say Ni at will to old ladies. There is a pesti­lence upon this land, noth­ing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrub­beries are under con­sid­er­able eco­nomic stress in this period in history.”

King Arthur: “Did you say shrubberies?”

Roger the Shrub­ber: “Yes, shrub­beries are my trade. I am a shrub­ber. My name is Roger the Shrub­ber. I arrange, design, and sell shrubberies.”

I just love that! As they would say in Savan­nah, Happy Thanks­giv­ing Y’All!

My sis­ter and her prize win­ning dahlia

On my recent trip to the Low Coun­try (ie Charleston, Savan­nah and Beau­fort) I stopped off in Michi­gan to trikke and attend the Dahlia Show. This was my sis­ter Mary Lynn’s first judg­ing of her first crop of dahlias. You may remem­ber her jour­ney into dahlia­land began with drop­ping in on Wil­son Gar­ner after pass­ing his gor­geous gar­den many times. This led to a post on Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com and her fur­ther inter­est in dahlias; she even­tu­ally joined the South­east­ern Michi­gan Dahlia Soci­ety. You can imag­ine her excite­ment when she won the “Best Novice Bloom” cat­e­gory at their annual show; we couldn’t get enough pic­tures! (Yes, the bloom is as big as her head!)

I did some delv­ing on dahlias in SoCal as I almost never see them in nurs­eries here. Grown from tubers, they do flour­ish in our cli­mate and there are clubs in our area; go to the Amer­i­can Dahlia Soci­ety web­site at www​.dahlia​.org to find them. We don’t have to over­win­ter the dahlia tubers if our tem­per­a­tures stay above 20 F. They like full sun, rich soil, good drainage, a steady sup­ply of water and reg­u­lar feed­ing and will bloom through Thanks­giv­ing (thanks, Sharon Cohoon). Warn­ing: these dahlias are addictive!

Some online sources: www​.dahlias​.com (source for cut flow­ers), www​.dans​dahlias​.com, www​.cgdahlias​.com.

Dahlias are all about variety

On the web:

Sales:

• Ander­sons La Costa /​Encini­tas: Foun­tains 20% off thru the end of September
• South Bay Gar­dens /​Redondo Beach: ¹⁰⁄₁ and 10/​2 — 40% off on all trees, must bring coupon from website
• Nopal­ito Native Plants /​Ven­tura: thru Oct. 31 — 15% off on all Cal­i­for­nia natives

Classes:

• Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion /​San Fer­nando Val­ley — 10/​1 — “3 part Native plant gar­den design” and “Grow­ing spring wild­flow­ers from seed” (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Los Ange­les Arbore­tum: ⁹⁄₂₉ class on Arts and Crafts gar­dens: Native plants for native homes (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
• San Diego Mas­ter Gar­den­ers: ¹⁰⁄₁ Autumn in the Gar­den Tour and Mar­ket (www.mastergardenerssandiego..org/garden tour
• San Diego Botanic Gar­den: ¹⁰⁄₁ and 2 Inter­na­tional Orchid Fair (www​.sdb​gar​den​.org)

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

• You can view Jo’s web­site by click­ing on the Aus­tralian but­ton on the top right of my web­site — it is won­der­fully informative.
• Amy Goldman’s web­site is www​.rar​eforms​.com. The Seed Savers web­site is www​.seed​savers​.com.
• Tom Pritchard’s web­site is www​.mad​der​lakedesigns​.com.

On the Web

• ⁹⁄₂₄: UC Irvine Arboretum/​Sat­ur­day Plant Sale (949−824−5833)
• ⁹⁄₂₄: Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild Flow­ers and Native Plants Hum­ming­bird Orna­ment Work­shop, No Lawn Work­shop (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• ⁹⁄₂₄: Ship­ley Nature Cen­ter, Orange County — Annual Native Plant Sale/​Composting work­shop (www​.ship​ley​na​ture​.org)