George Winter is a soft-spoken man with a large presence. “When he speaks, people listen,” one of his long-time staff, Sherry Rosen, said to me when the three of us met to walk through Wyntour Gardens in Redding earlier this summer. And for good reason, George Winter has been one of the most knowledgeable, smiling and constant faces of the Northstate gardening world for the past 30-plus years.

George grew up on a dairy farm in Gridley and his father went into the nursery business later in his life. After graduating with an Industrial Education degree from CSU Chico, George thought he would like to be a teacher. It didn’t take him long to realize that the nursery business was his calling: “I thought the kids were going to eat me alive,” he recalls laughing.

When his father was ready to retire in the 1970s, Winter took over the family business, the Red Bluff Garden Center, and when the opportunity arose for a second nursery, he jumped at the chance. On April 4, 1992, he opened Wyntour Gardens in Redding, on Airport Road near the Redding Municipal Airport. Every April Wyntour Gardens holds an Anniversary Event in celebration.

Winter attributes the success of the two nurseries to a couple of things – most importantly, his excellent staff who “love what they do and are knowledgeable about it,” and he has always made it a point to provide the best plants possible for our region.

In time he realized that one of the best ways to provide the best plants was to grow them himself. In the early 2000s, Winter started the wholesale propagators, North Valley Growers, based out of the Red Bluff Garden Center and managed by longtime horticulturist Jeff Brooks. Besides supplying plants to Wyntour Gardens and the Red Bluff Garden Center, plants with the North Valley Growers’ tag can be found at nurseries up and down the valley. And, in part on principle, plants from other local growers can be found at Wyntour Gardens and Red Bluff Garden Center.

“Plants that are grown locally are acclimated to our climate and soils, they travel less, need less packaging and ultimately are better, more successful plants that cost less for the nurseries and the customer,” explains Winter. “Growing plants ourselves allows us to more easily and swiftly follow plant trends, or help to inspire those plants trends – for instance by getting more varieties of drought tolerant or native plants into the industry.”

That impulse to inspire and lead the way in horticultural trends does not stop with the plant propagation, it is what led Winter to make both of his nurseries part of the Master Nursery association, to carry the widest possible selection of organic and sustainable plant and soil fertilizers and amendments, and to re-use or recycle all plastic nursery pots. Wyntour Gardens also boasts one of the largest selections of glazed pottery you will find in the Northstate.

George and his wife Carol are both avid gardeners at their home in the foothills of Redding. “We started with bare ground, nothing but brush!” George tells me. Carol designed the landscape (which includes several different gardens). They terraced the grounds and developed and installed an irrigation system. Last Fall they planted over 1500
narcissus bulbs on their hillsides “which were just spectacular this past spring!”

While having successfully been in business for more than 30 years, Winter still has goals for Wyntour Gardens: “I would like to improve our water gardening and pond plant selections, I want to see our events and classes continue to expand – and to work toward even more focus and clarity,” he says. “Customers are what make our nurseries great and I am honored to have served some local families for several generations now,” Winter continues. In order to better serve those customers, in the past few years, Winter has developed easy to use websites for both nurseries, on-line newsletter subscription services, and free monthly classes at both sites so that gardeners can learn and engage in the life and community of the nurseries.

While soft-spoken, Winter is a born communicator. In the past he has done a Garden Spot for the Channel 7 news, he regularly contributes to InsideOut magazine, and he writes a column for both nurseries’ websites entitled George’s Almanac. For more information about events, classes or newsletters from Wyntour Gardens or the Red Bluff Garden Center, visit their websites: www.wyntourgardens.com and www.redbluffgardencenter.com. Both the real and on-line nurseries are worth a visit.

“One acre well compast, is worth acres three.” Ward Habriel becomes quiet and reverent as he quotes one of his heroes, J. I. Rodale, father of the modern day organic gardening movement. Quiet and reverent are clearly at the depths of their passion, but “gregarious and fun” are more accurate descriptors for Cheryl and Ward Habriel – Master Composters and avid home gardeners who have been visiting Paradise since the 1970s and have lived in upper Paradise full-time since 2004.

I first met Ward and Cheryl on the Paradise Garden Club tour earlier this summer – he was in charge of a home composting demonstration station. Their knowledge – and their senses of humor – became apparent almost immediately. In the handful of times I have gotten together with them, Ward generally has a Rot Hotline t-shirt on, their car has a bumper sticker that reads: Compost Happens. These people love compost. And they want us to love it too. “One of the great things about compost is that it happens whether you are part of it or not. Leave a pile of leaves and twigs and nature will compost it for you – it’s just the natural process of decomposing organic matter. That’s the science of it. The art and fun of it is when you decide to actively participate. I mean for heaven’s sake why buy what you can make for free and do a better job of it? You already have all the materials – no matter how large or small your estate or apartment might be!”

Ward and Cheryl are life-long home gardeners. In the mid-1990s, retired from the insurance industry and while still living in Castro Valley, Ward became interested in the idea of composting as way to save money and put his yard waste to work. He and Cheryl took an introductory class on composting by Alameda County and from there they were both accepted into the Master Composter program.

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The road to Shambani Organics is as beautiful a northern California road as I have driven. You come across the rock strewn valley floor grassland at the foot of the Mt. Lassen wilderness area. After a twisting rise into the foothills, two enormous old gnarled black walnut trees mark the entrance to the farm. Two Queensland Heelers wag all around. The wooden house sets into the land as it slopes away toward natural woodland and a year-round creek. A view from the top of the farm looks out over a small orchard, the two white greenhouses and a field garden that is green with spring crops, over the tops of oaks and the valley floor to mountains spreading across the horizon.

Shambani Organics (http://www.shambaniorganics.com) is a small, family-owned and operated business growing organic vegetable and herb starts on this 3.5 acre farm in the foothills between Manton and Shingletown. Laurie and Wayne Kessler began the business in 2006. The Kesslers were Peace Corps Volunteers in Eritrea in the 1960s, they purchased their Shingletown farm in the late 1970s. Wayne was a portrait photographer for many years, but in the mid-1990s the Kesslers returned to Eritrea where they worked and lived for seven years.

“When we returned home to California in 2002, people thought we were retired,” Laurie told me laughing, “and we told them, ‘no we’re unemployed.’” This most recent re-entry into American life gave them pause. Not quite ready to retire, and wanting to do work that was both rewarding and in line with their own hopes of self-sufficiency, they found themselves asking: What do we want to do now? They researched several possibilities, including a community access kitchen. Wayne had always been a gardener, and as the very layout of their farm suggests, they already tended quite a lot of fruits and vegetables themselves. Then they met John and Colene Trinterud of Peaceful Glen Organics in Mendocino County’s Round Valley. Laurie and Wayne helped the Trinteruds in their nursery greenhouse in early 2005 and they immediately thought: “This would be nice work. We should do this.” The Kesslers continue their friendship and mentoring relationship with the Trinteruds.
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Donna Bayliss grows lavender – acres and acres, rows and rows of multiple varieties of certified organic lavender – and rosemary, lemon verbena, scented geranium, lemon balm, chamomile, sage and clary sage, to name a few – for the organic botanical industry. But in my mind, Donna grows those fields of lavender for me and for the views her fields offer to me as I drive up or down Highway 99. Those fields make me dream and their fragrance – or the thought of it - makes me happy.

Which is exactly why Donna Bayliss grows lavender – because lavender – its sight, scent, and taste makes people happier and healthier. “There are curative powers in lavender oil. The scent of the oil is relaxing and the active elements in the oil are healing. If I had not experienced these qualities myself, I would not be so sure. But I have and I am,” Donna tells me passionately. “My goal for this ranch is to continue to offer the opportunity for consumers to experience the real essence – not cheap synthetic imposters – of these plants. I also wanted to protect my son’s legacy and raise the bar environmentally on our ranch - to use less water, no pesticides or herbicides. Growing these naturally drought tolerant and relatively disease free herbs, I am able to do all of that – and be surrounded by their beauty year-round.”

Grown as a culinary and medicinal herb throughout the world, throughout time, lavender (Lavandula) is a genus comprising multiple species and hybrids. Bayliss Ranch grows many varieties, including Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’, “which keeps its dark blue color much longer;” Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’ and Lavandula x intermedia ‘Provence,’ “which have longer stems for arranging.”

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If Spring in the garden is brazen – August in the garden is languid. I generally think of God as an energy, but when I lean toward personification, I like to think of God as a gardener – with broken fingernails, a stiff back, a sunburned neck, bramble-scraped and bug-bitten calves, a long-term plan of harmonious design, good intentions, and a happy heart. But absolutely positively unable to get it all done no matter how many hours worked or how much effort expended…and yet… still willing to try. And even God – like us gardeners – needed a day of rest. While many climates take their rest in the deep of Winter - the heat of August in the Northstate is my Gardening Sunday.

My war with weeds has come to some kind of stalemate – I have won a few battles, but the weeds have won their share. I have a bumper crop of bindweed and to be honest, I’m really liking the pale pink morning-glory flowers of it trailing through some intensely purple lantana – it’s as nice a companion planting as I’ve ever planned. I have resigned myself to the fact that the current state of affairs IS what all last winter’s planning and spring work led to and that my summer garden for this year is what I see before me. Fruits fatten on tree and vine, some are ready now and others are waiting for Fall. The Fall garden? Well, it waits for the heat to subside. As do I.

Not that there isn’t plenty to do – watering, harvesting vegetables, watering, weeding, watering, deadheading, re-mulching to cut down on watering, collecting seeds and watering again. My roses are still going gangbusters – especially if I remember to cut back the spent blooms. Crepe Myrtle – white, red, purple and pink - sings her siren song. I even had a few late-season sweet-peas - sweet pea, nasturium, very ripe melon or very ripe tomato are good seeds to be collecting now for next year’s garden. And you have to admire those plants that live for just August’s heat - my rudbeckia, gaillardia, and oregano have never looked better. I on the other hand, am all for the siesta attitude and feel the need to contract a bit each mid-afternoon. After all, a day of rest is a day of rest - or a month. Most everything can wait until the cool of early evening, early morning or even early October.

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