We went off on a grand excursion today, to visit a number of nurseries about which I have heard, in search of good sources and ideas. Our destinations: Native Here Nursery, Annie's Annuals, Magic Gardens, Dry Garden, and Berkeley Horticultural Nursery.
Native Here was pretty good if you knew exactly what you wanted, and were willing to raise it from a weensy little seedling, even if it happened to be an oak or something equally slow-growing. Not for the impatient. On the other hand, they had the best selection of native clump grasses. And they're cheap.
Annie's Annuals, our second stop, was the win of the day. Holy crap, they had a lot of stuff! Here's Elaine, stunned:
One of my secret reasons for going to a bunch of nurseries was to get positive IDs on some plants I'd been wondering about. Like this one, which is Linaria reticulata 'Velvet Red':
But even the best nurseries have a few plants sitting around with no labels on them. Like this one:
Which they of course make up for with weird and wonderful new things that never seem to be highlighted or particularly vivacious in the botanical gardens. As evidence I submit this Asclepias speciosa, aka Showy Milkweed:
This one probably had a label, but I was flagging from the sun and it was lunchtime.
After a delicious lunch at Picante, we went on to Magic Gardens, where I visited my old friend, the kiwi vine. Kiwis are remarkably hardy, and I have great plans to plant one on a pergola connecting the front yard to the back, the better to randomly pelt us with ripe fruit from above.
Magic Gardens had some really excellent plants, and I'm definitely going there to get our fruit vines when we're ready to plant up the pergolas of doom.
The Dry Garden was kind of a disappointment, because I have already decided against putting in a cactus garden. But Noel found a new plant for his office there, and they had a few plants I'd been wanting to see in person after seeing them in books.
Noel began to feel unwell, so we hydrated him and parked him on Elaine's sofa while we continued on to Berkeley Horticultural Nursery. Where they have a righteous water garden with fishies.
I've been on a big blue flower kick lately, or something. Here we have Osteospermum ecklonis 'Nasinga Purple.'
Berk. Hort. had a good selection of ornamental trees, although some of them had very awkward grafts on them, and others had mildew or spots. They seemed to have one of the better selections of fruit trees, which is worth keeping in mind, although of course I hate parking in that part of Berkeley.
A pretty good day, all told. Next time, we wear hats and bring water, though. Also, we will endeavor to not eat bad take-out the night before so Noel doesn't suffer mightily for the last half of the day.
