The Northern California Natural History Museum (http://www.ncnhm.org/index.asp) celebrated its groundbreaking in downtown Chico this past spring. “The mission of the Northern California Natural History Museum is to create a life-long learning environment that enables people to explore, interpret, and celebrate the magnificent natural heritage of our region through science, research, and education. We strive to combine the resources of California State University, Chico and the entire region to provide an educational and culturally enriching site where families, school classes, clubs, and friends can gather for a variety of activities: 1.) To learn about the natural history of Northern California, past and present; 2.) To compare Northern California’s habitats with others in North America and the world; 3.) To explore interactions between our region’s environment and the people who live here, including the original Native Americans; 4.) To participate in the exhilaration of “doing science”; 5.) To learn about our region’s critical habitats and then visit the habitats on field trips.” Photo above: the board of directors of the NCNHM at the ground breaking for the new building.

Hurray for that. All of that.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Raymond Barnett, a Professor of Vertebrate Biology at California State University Chico since the late 1970s, began mulling over the fact that Northern California needed an institution dedicated to celebrating and protecting the region’s rich natural history. Simultaneously, as a professor and a father, he was dismayed with failing science education curriculums in many of Northern California’s school systems. He decided to work toward the idea of starting a natural history museum in order to address both issues. He began by using his own personal collection of rocks and bones (found on hikes, biking, and camping trips around the region) in what he calls very “simple” hallway displays in CSU Chico’s Science building. Photo above: Dr. Ray Barnett is third from the left.

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Denise Kelly always wanted to own The Plant Barn (www.theplantbarn.com) Denise spent her early childhood in Southern California. Her family relocated to Susanville when Denise was in the 8th grade and she moved to Chico to attend CSU Chico. After graduation, Denise stayed in the area and worked variously as an event planner, wedding consultant and landscape designer, all the while raising her children and home gardening herself. Each corner she turned for work seemed to bring her back to the Plant Barn for flowers and plants. “I have always been a plant nerd, and it just made me so happy to be there and chat about plants with the owner Ilona Cronan. I always thought, that is what I really want to do. I want to own the Plant Barn and make other people feel this way all day.”

She failed, however, to mention this fact to Ilona and one day about 5 years ago, she realized that without the business ever going on the market, the Cronan’s had sold it to one of their employees. Denise was devastated and felt as though she had missed her one chance, but she did not make the same mistake twice. Without delay, she told the new owner that if she ever wanted to sell, Denise would be interested. Sure enough, almost two years ago, Denise got a call asking if she was still interested. YES! She said immediately and with the help of family was able to make her dream come true. What she did not know at the time, was that two other buyers had also lined up to purchase the long-time nursery. One of them, however, wanted to tear down the iconic barn for which the business is named and the other was not able to get their financing. “Good things always happen for me in threes,” laughed Denise showing me a tattoo of a key and the number 3 on her inner wrist, “I have three great kids, I was the third owner in line, I am the third owner of The Plant Barn. 3 is the Key.” She got the tattoo shortly after securing the purchase and it’s a constant reminder of how she is making her dream come true.

Ilona and Dave Cronan started Chico Propagators wholesale plant greenhouses and The Plant Barn over 27 years ago. When they sold The Plant Barn, they kept the wholesale growing business in the greenhouses behind the retail nursery. This is a great arrangement that spreads out the work and responsibility of two such big businesses, which are related and yet very different. “There’s a great symbiotic relationship between Dave Cronan, the owner and Sally Greenwood, the head grower at Chico Propagators and myself at the Plant Barn,” Denise says. “I am learning as I go here, about plants and about the business (Although she clearly knows a good bit about both). When a customer comes to me and asks if I have a certain plant, I can call Sally on the walkie-talkie and ask if we can grow it.”

This capability in turn allows customers a remarkable opportunity to learn about and explore new plants as well. It also helps the staff at The Plant Barn, including full-timer Rebecca and part-timer Nancy as well as Denise to stay on top of what they do best. One of the things The Plant Barn is now known for is its fabulous array of custom planted containers – the plants they put together and they containers they put them in will make you take note and consider amping up your own home container plantings.

One of the other things The Barn does really well is to set customers at ease. The staff are always cheerful and never seem to mind if you buy something today or not. The site is not too big and so is not overwhelming, but it has lots of ever-changing interesting vignettes made up of gifts, pots, furniture, fountains, and loads of interesting plants tucked into the main display space. The greenhouses are also available to walk through, and walking into a warm, moist, plant filled greenhouse on a cold grey winter day is just short of heaven. And for me one of the best draws of the plant barn is how many of their specialty perennials are available in 4 inch pots rather than just gallons – as a plant-aholic myself, this takes some of the financial sting out of trying out some new plants, as well as allowing me to buy three or more so my garden runs less risk of becoming a cluttered mess of one of every kind of plant on the planet.

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Gardeners’ activist is the only phrase that really fit when I was trying to describe Carolyn Melf to someone else recently. I first met Carolyn when she slipped me a business card during a local rose society meeting. It was not her card, but rather someone else’s card on the back of which she had written her name and phone number and the fact that she had a “fabulous” Iris garden in Paradise. “I am infected with the Iris virus!” she had written. A few days later when I was reading through a recent edition of “insideout” magazine, I saw two article written by Melf . A few days after that, I went out to Paradise to see Iris Spring – her home garden featuring more than 650 different varieties of Iris, which was fabulous and in full bloom the day of my visit. Carolyn and I had had a good long gardener’s chat as we walked among her beloved Iris (and peonies and roses and azaleas), and that very day she sent me an email letting me know that she was also a member of the Paradise Garden Club and that she would love to have me attend the upcoming regular meeting that would feature a daylily grower as the speaker, and “Was I interested in the upcoming annual Paradise Garden Tour?” Finally, I noticed at the end of her article on fuschia in InSideOut magazine that her credit mentioned she had founded a group called the Potting Ladies. Photo above: looking across a blooming Iris Spring Garden.

Whoa. And I thought I was an avid gardener.

Carolyn Melf is a happy ball of fire about anything to do with gardening – the fire getting even more heated when the subject of deer in Paradise comes up. A retired academic advisor from the California State University Chico’s College of Business, Carolyn says she had an appointment with a new or continuing student about their transfer courses, current course choices or their future careers every twenty minutes of every day. No wonder retirement left her with energy to spare. Photo above shows Carolyn and good friend Dolores, also an avid iris collector and grower.

Carolyn and her husband have been building their garden in Paradise for the past 30 years. At first, they fought an uphill battled against the persistent deer. But on a hot August day of that first year in the garden, she purchased a whole load of iris rhizomes at an Iris Society sale in the Kmart parking lot because the sign said that deer would not eat them. Carolyn found her garden’s niche. Well, its first niche. With the beautiful bloom of those iris the next spring, Carolyn was irreversibly infected with the Iris Virus. Since that time her home garden has been named Iris Spring, which is sort of a play on both her love of spring blooming iris and the year-round spring-fed creek that decoratively divides the garden into two parts.

Carolyn adds iris to her collection almost every year. She orders from other small growers and hybridizers, from catalogues and nurseries. She currently has 650 different varieties in bloom from early March to early June. The rhizomes are drought tolerant, they need a minimum of a half-day of sun and to be fed with a tomato fertilizer in spring, and they need to be divided every 3 to 4 years to keep good consistent bloom. Thus the birth of the Iris Spring sales form: while Iris Spring is open for visitors from 10:00 – 4:00 Thursday through Sunday during the bloom period, it is also open for sales of the dormant rhizomes in late summer and early fall. “Most people come to see the iris in bloom and then order their plants right then, after having seen them in bloom. I call them when their plants are ready as I divide the rhizomes in July and August,” explains Carolyn. “I had to divide them anyway, and one day early on a man stopped and asked me if I would sell him a division of every iris I had. I thought: why didn’t I think of that sooner?” The iris sales help to support Carolyn’s iris habit and she is considering broadening her specific addictions to include peonies as well as iris.

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I love clematis. My grandmother had the most amazing old vine at her house outside of Boston. It climbed up her grape arbor and its large purple flowers bloomed with fervor in June. I have been reading about Chalk Hill Clematis since the mid-1990s when the nursery’s existence came to the attention of the gardening press. While living in Washington State, the UK and then Colorado, I regularly visited the Chalk Hill Clematis website (http://www.chalkhillclematis.com/) and indulged in the photos of their vast selection of plant varieties. This past February I visited the garden and met Kaye Heafey (owner, with her husband Richard) and Murray Rosen, Nursery Manager. Even in its winter dress, Chalk Hill Clematis lived up to my expectations. Rosen cheerfully walked my husband and me around the 5 acres of cut flower plant stock, of nursery greenhouses and finally around the beautifully conceived and designed Mary Toomey Clematis Garden, where every garden structure or plant other than clematis serves to showcase the central star.

For the record, there are two accepted ways to pronounce clematis. I was brought up saying CLEM-uh-tis, and so I will continue to do. Others pronounce it clem-ahh-tis (equal stress on all 3 syllables and a flat rather than short A in the middle), and most sources agree that both pronunciations are correct.

Kaye Heafey first hatched the idea of growing clematis for the high-end cut flower industry (think the lobby at Bergdorf Goodman or The Carlyle in New York City or Los Angeles) with her Oakland-based floral designer, Carrie Glenn. While the original idea included growing all kinds of interesting and hard-to-find cut floral materials, by 1993 the business had shifted almost entirely to growing clematis for its long stemmed, twirling naturalistic interest and dramatic bloom size and color. Rosen, born and raised in the northeast, joined Chalk Hill in 1993. A friend of Glenn’s and an artist by education, he had been working at a rare plant nursery in Berkeley specializing in roses and clematis. With Rosen’s involvement, it was not long before Chalk Hill Clematis developed their nursery for growing and selling clematis plants as a complement to the cut flower business.

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