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| Makes me want to be browsing there right now. |
It was with curiosity and pleasure that I took my gardening friend "Mary" over to
Gold Rush Nursery last weekend.
I wrote about Mary's garden in the post
An Amazing Young Native Garden in San Jose. She came with a long shopping list of native plants, and happily and carefully worked her way through it.
As Ms Town Mouse recently posted -
it's a great time for buying plants.
Nicky, the nursery owner, has brought her wonderful plants to sell at Ms Town Mouse's garden when it was on the native garden tour for the past two or three years. She sells many fine natives, and non-invasive plants that are good for wild life and/or are low water use.
This past weekend was her first sale and open house. The event was also a fundraiser for multiple myeloma research.
Soquel is in a wonderful growing area, and the nursery is one of a row of small nursery type businesses, on a road that runs along a flat river bottom area.
Nicky propagates much of her stock, and sells it in 4 inch and six inch pots rather than the traditional gallon pots. Everything looked so healthy, positively bursting with potential - it did a body good just to wander up and down the pathways and breathe in the green life.
Part way through my visit, my daughter called me to say she had had a blood test result that was very worrying (she is monitored for a prior condition that was successfully treated). So I spent the rest of my visit worrying. I didn't get the photos I wanted to of Nicky, and of the open house arrangements and so on. Thankfully, by the end of the day we got good news: it was just a mistake in the test. A retest was completely normal. I don't think I'll ever forget that visit to Gold Rush Nursery.
But I would like to visit again and write more about how this lovely small nursery thrives - it's like a pipe dream come true for many of us gardeners I think, to have our own small nursery, and I'd love to know more. I'd particularly love to pick Nicky's brains on your behalf, and mine, to learn some of her propagation tips.
Below are some photos I took of the plants and their setting. In whatever order they were imported.
One beef I have with Blogger, or maybe it's me, is that it's difficult to move photos around.
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| Shopper examining some plants. |
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| Another shot showing the neat irrigation on the outdoor beds, and the greenhouses. |
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| Artimisia pycnocephala. I like it. |
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| California Fuchsia |
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| Heuchera, sunlight shining through them |
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| Getcher Lovely Plants for Sale! |
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| Artemisia pycnocephala- I just love how dense and silvery this beach sagewort looks |
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| Happy fence lizard on bug patrol |
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| Getting ready for more plants it looks like |
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| Room for expansion! |
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| Good mission statement! |
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| Nifty shade house construction |
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| I want one! |
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