A new morning (or, “I’m alive!”)

After a few days of sunny and mild weather, the rain has returned for what appears to be the upcoming week, and beyond. It’s nice to have had a break in the rain, as we are now in record  breaking territory for the wettest year on record. However, the drought is not over according to the powers that be. Southern California, that oasis in the desert, has not gotten the required amount of rain to pull them out of drought. They don’t need to worry, since we have their water safely impounded behind secure dams, like Oroville. 

A Upworthy video popped up on my Facebook feed extolling the virtues of urban Gardening for food production. Most of these videos have a hopeful feel that we can feed the growing populations in the if we just bring food production closer to the people eating the food. It all sound great, and you might think we are making some headway here but, ¼ of all front gardens in Great Britain are being paved over for automobiles. Seems the idea of moving to the city and taking part in the public transportation system doesn’t fly when you have a car. Lot’s of hopeful wishes and happy videos out there.

We got ripped off a few weeks ago. Someone drove in, cut the lock on the gate, and drove off with 100’s of bags of our soils, drip irrigation equipment, etc. Amazingly the stuff was spotted by an alert deputy and much of it returned. The crook who took it is on the run, but the deputy seemed confident they will eventually be caught. So we have had to install security cameras, motion detecting equipment, and extra lighting. While I don’t like this kind of stuff, what can we do? No when the motion detector goes off I can quickly see, via our smartphone, all the different areas of the nursery. Seems thieving has been on the up-rise around here.

That’s all for today. Just waiting for the rains to let up so we can start planting for spring. It’s always too much, or too little water at planting season. Just the way it is, and what makes horticulture and gardening a challenge.

Pier 39 horticulture in good hands

Tulipmania has come and gone at Pier 39 in San Francisco. I had forgotten about the event it until reminded by a post at Far Out Flora last month. Every year this tourist hot spot on the bay puts together a fabulous flower display, with the focus on Tulips. The pier juts into the bay, so any planting is done in containers. Because the location near Fisherman's Wharf, its often ignored by the locals looking to avoid the maddening crowds. It was fun to see Far Out Flora take the time to photograph this display. It's beautiful and took me back 35 years to the start of my horticulture career.

Right out of high school I attended The College of San Mateo so as to take advantage of their fine horticulture program. It was there where I met Denise Dirickson, who at that time had recently been hired to care for the container gardens at the newly constructed Pier. We attended a horticulture class together, and I always wondered what had happened with Denise.

Through a Tweet from Pier 39  we found out that Denise was still in charge of the horticulture at The Pier after 35 years. During Tulipmania she gives tours of the plantings and according to the SF Examiner has her crew plant "39,000 bulbs from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Most of them are tulips but there are also others such as Narcissus." During the rest of the year the many planters are always well tended, and filled with greenery and flowers.

Through their photographs and blog, Far Out Flora brings to life the beauty that Tulipmania is. That's what the bulb industry needs, a fresh look at what is possible and not tired assumptions and stereotypes. I hope Denise knows her 35 years of work is appreciated by a whole new generation of gardeners. The idea that we are working in a trade that is declining in popularity can be frustrating, to say the least. All those years of working in the garden center or on the pier are actually paying off now with a whole new generation of gardening enthusiasts.

Here are more pictures of the event as well as some other SF novelties. Notice in the picture above how Denise used parsley as filler between the flowers. What a fantastic idea!

Flora Grubb Gardens, San Francisco

Monica and I headed down to San Francisco Monday to check things out. I wanted to stop and visit a new garden center I had read about in Garden Design Magazine. Flora Grub Gardens is located just off 3^rd St. on Jerrold Ave. It is a new facility that just opened in May. The gardens are named after the owner who moved from Texas during the dot com era. After that fell apart she started doing landscape design and then opened Guerrero Street Gardens Nursery.Now they have opened this facility.

Located in a warehouse district you have to look for this place. Surrounded by a tall metal fence a necessity in this part of town, the nursery is shinny and new. A metal roof covers most of the nursery and there is parking inside, but only 5 or 6 spaces, so like a lot of city businesses you park on the street. As you approach the store you realize palms are king here as there are some very large specimens growing in the ground as well as in containers.

This is a store about plants with dramatic or interesting foliage. Most of them would not grow in the foothills where we are. This is a frost free area and tropical and sub-tropical's abound. I didn't recognize many of them. Cactus and succulents are everywhere including displayed around this old car which may or may not have been sitting on the property when they built this place. There is the requisite coffee shop, "Ritual Coffee" which is located in the store. The store is airy and filled with books to look at. The fertilizer section has maybe five types of organics, and that's it. A small high end tool selection rounds out the conventional garden supplies.

What's interesting to me is this store is run by someone relatively new to the garden center business. Just like Surf City Nursery in Santa Cruz the owners are new to the trade and that's important. It seems to me that some of the most interesting new garden centers are run by folks who don't have any preconceived notions about what makes a great garden center. Who says you need every type of fertilizer and pesticide on your shelves? I saw one organic pesticide in the shop and that's it.

This store is focused on what they do well, which is lots, and lots of containers and plants with interesting or dramatic foliage. The flower section and soil amendments almost seemed like an afterthought. Is this the future of garden center retailing? Focus on a few core products and skills and drop the rest? I would suspect that if you're interested in this kind of look there is no other nursery in S.F. that does it this well.