Since 1917 a plant nursery has lived on the site where Native Grounds Nursery & Garden Center in Mount Shasta City now thrives. For 91 years people of the Northstate have journeyed to this same pine-tree-sheltered spot on Mount Shasta Boulevard as you enter the small mountain town of Mount Shasta City to buy their plants, their soil, their seeds. Dating back to the original nursery, a hefty, gnarled old Wisteria vine winds its way through one of the tall pines and blooms its heart out every spring. “People stop and ask us what that purple flowering pine is,” say Native Grounds Nursery owners Lori Oliver and Terez Maniatis. A little stone house, once home to the original nursery’s founding family, sits just to the left of the Wisteria festooned pine stand and at the heart of the bustling Native Grounds site. The site is actually home to three businesses owned and run by Oliver and Maniatis: the year-round Mt. Shasta Florist, as well as the Native Grounds Nursery Garden Center and Native Grounds landscaping.

Oliver and Maniatis began their business life in the gardening world in 1993 with a small landscape design and build company also called Native Grounds. When the old Mt. Shasta Nursery & Florist came up for sale in the late 90s, the women jumped at the chance. “It has always been a dream of ours to own a nursery,” Terez told me. “We wanted to be able to grow a lot of our own plants to our own high, organic and sustainable standards - to be able to provide our clients with a wider selection of interesting plants - to model and keep educating our clients and customers about the benefits of organic and sustainable gardening products and practices. To be even more involved in the gardening cycle.”

The modeling of more sustainable practices started right when Oliver and Maniatis took over the nursery in 2000. They had to safely dispose of “truckloads” of older, toxic chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. At the same time, they brought a full-line of organic soil supplements and plant foods into the garden center. They moved their design/build and maintenance landscaping business onto the nursery grounds and renamed the nursery Native Grounds. While they also own and run the florist business on the same piece of property, they left its name as the Mt. Shasta Florist. Mt. Shasta Florist, which now carries many organic or sustainably grown cut flowers, and Native Grounds Landscaping remain open year-round, while Native Grounds Nursery & Garden Center closes from the end of October to the first of April.

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Gardening, and the planted environment, is part of our cultural literacy – I am convinced of this. And local independent nurseries are the equivalent of the local library for this particular (and in my mind critical) aspect of our literacy. Local nurseries are gathering, learning and socializing places that help us live productively and happily in our communities.

Recently, I was visiting the Prickly Pear Nursery in Orland, chatting with Diane Stout, the owner, when three local Garden Club Ladies came by. Their hands were full. One had a large fresh green stem from what looked like a shrub, another had a pot with a small dead-or-dying specimen and the other had black plastic plant pots to recycle. Diane knew the ladies by name and they were hoping she could help them identify the first item, diagnose the second item and make use of the third. She was able to do all three, and the ladies stayed a while, chatting with us and comparing notes on what their gardens were up to just now. Two of the ladies bought something and they said good-bye. The interaction left me with this powerful feeling – the feeling you get when an experience transcends itself and comes to represent something larger. Photo Above: Diane Stout and her dog Bullet.

Diane Stout and her husband, Dave, moved to Orland from Carpinteria, near Santa Barbara, in 2003. Diane had for many years owned Hollyhocks Gardens, a small independent nursery in Carpinteria. When she moved north, she knew she wanted to continue in the nursery world, but was not sure she wanted to dive right in to owning. She spent her first few years in the Northstate working at the Red Bluff Garden Center, followed by Mendons Nursery in Paradise. “Suzy Brooks and Jerry and John Mendon were all great people to work with and learn from,” says Diane. But eventually, she was ready to start again at a place of her own – and in her home-town of Orland. September marked the one-year anniversary of the nursery.
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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.

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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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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I wager most gardeners would say that they welcome birds and butterflies into their gardens, and that many gardeners would say that in part they even plan their gardens or choose their specific plants in order to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and songbirds. Brian and Jill Williams and their two young boys, Canyon and Cooper have a bird and butterfly friendly garden well beyond what I have ever imagined, and in fact is more accurately described as a wildlife friendly garden. The Williams’ work to attract waterfowl, raptors, song birds, butterflies, moths, woodland mammals, lizards, snakes – even grubs, because the Williams’ philosophy is that “wildlife makes a garden alive and adventurous,” and who would want anything less?

Brian Williams is a consulting wildlife biologist. He comes from generations of farmers in Placer County and graduated with his graduate degree from Sacramento State. He and, Jill, an educator, have been creating their house and 10 and a half-acre garden outside of Honcut since 2002. The concept of planning for a wildlife friendly garden actually started with the Williams’ search for a home site. They had very specific criterion, which included that their dream property had to have water. After looking at several different land parcels around the Northstate, the Williams chose their property outside of Honcut in part for the ½ mile of Honcut Creek, which runs year-round through the property. They also chose this property for its many mature, native Pines and Oaks. These elements – creek and trees - were not only aesthetically attractive, but – from the Williams’ perspective - they would provide the water, food, and shelter necessary for a truly wildlife friendly garden.

Next, the Williams’ carefully sited and then built their house by hand – literally – of adobe bricks mixed from their property’s red clay, straw and sand and then baked in the sun. While building, Brian and Jill noticed that rough wing swallows were darting in and around the adobe walls as they progressed. Brian came up with an ingenious version of a “bird house” by building 3-inch PVC pipe lengths into the house walls in three spots around the house. The pipes are open to the outside and lead into three nesting boxes that are faced with removable ¾ inch exterior-grade acrylic on the inside. These peek-a-boo nesting boxes are curtained so that they remain dark and private for the nesting families, but still allow the Williams family occasional close-up looks at the nesting cycles of the birds. The acrylic panels are removable so that the boxes can be cleaned out annually. Besides the bird boxes, the exterior of the adobe walls host many a swallowtail butterfly larvae in the winter.

This attention to the patterns of the wildlife already on their property - noticing the rough wing swallows exploring for nesting sites – is one of the important habits to develop if your really want to create a wildlife friendly garden, Brian emphasizes. Pay attention to when the animals that are already there come out to feed, where they show up already and either re-produce sites like the ones they already like, or make the ones they already like more protected from predators, more accessible, whatever. Brian and Jill do more than just pay attention to patterns – they track the patterns of the wildlife in their garden on a spreadsheet. Brian keeps track of when different species appear each year, if and when they nest, how many eggs, if the nest was successful, what they eat, when they depart. Williams says that an average garden equipped with a handful of bird-feeders will attract 6 or so species. At last count, the Williams’ garden in Honcut had 160 different species of birds visiting every year.

When I visited his garden, Brian said: It doesn’t look like a garden does it? And in fact there is little in the way of traditional lawn, or flowerbeds as of yet. The Williams plan to add a very small adobe walled garden close to the house in time. But theirs is already a garden nonetheless - carefully planned and cared for specifically to welcome and nurture wildlife. Besides the “infra-structure” of water and trees that they looked for when choosing their home site, the Williams have used the ensuing six years to create even m ore “habitat” for creatures. “Encouraging the whole food chain is the best way to encourage any one part of the food chain,” says Brian, so if you want birds, you need bird food. And by that he does not mean man-made feeders outside of your windows. He means the whole web of things that feed wild birds throughout the year: plants that create the seeds as well as attract the worms and grubs and bugs and other small critters that will nourish a large bird population, including migrating, nesting and with young, or over-wintering birds.

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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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Jeff and Cheryl Armstrong founded Chico’s NutriLawn, a company specializing in lawn and shrub fertilization and recreational lake management, 20 years ago. They currently care for over 2000 lawns in the Chico area and they employ 18 people. In the last two years the Armstrongs have moved their business away from the chemically dependent mainstream and toward a more sustainable future through what they term “biological” lawn care. Photo above: Jeff Armstrong at a ground breaking ceremony for the Northern California Natural History Museum.

I first met Jeff Armstrong in person when I heard him speak on sustainable lawn care at an evening lecture hosted by Northern California Natural History Museum’s Museum Without Walls program last winter. Since hearing his talk, I have spent time with Jeff - driving with me as he made his rounds evaluating lawns, I have watched him brew compost tea, look at his brew under a microscope, and then watched him apply that compost tea to some of his lawns. We have talked about soil chemistry and mineral balances; preserving Northstate water quality, and whether it is possible to have a lawn as part of your landscape and still be a sustainable gardener. Ultimately, what is clear to me is that Jeff Armstrong is a man who likes a good lawn in the right place, likes healthy plants of all kinds, and has been positively re-born by his personal epiphany about two years ago that environmentally friendly and sustainable lawn care is the only future for him, his family, for the people who work under him and for their families, for the financial viability of his business and for the environment – local and global. Photo above: Jeff Armstrong applying foliar compost tea to a client’s lawn.

Jeff’s personal epiphany led him first to the library and the internet to research what other people were doing in the field of environmentally friendly lawn care and agriculture. He studied the work of Dr. Carey Reams, who developed and wrote widely on what is called the Brix Method of evaluating plant health and quality through analyzing plants’ sap, primarily for levels of carbohydrates. To simplistically summarize the Brix Method, the analyses of the sap of plants is used to determine what the soil in which they live might need in order to improve the health or nutritional value of the plant. Armstrong also studied the work of Dr. Elaine Ingham, who writes and teaches widely on another plant health approach model known as the Soil Food Web. Again simplistically, the Soil Food Web starts with any given soil’s micro-life, primarily looking for nutrient, mineral and organism levels. The Soil Food Web approach encourages a healthy soil biology with a good population of beneficial soil micro-organisms which in turn feed and protect the plants. Both the Brix Method and the Soil Food Web are used widely by growers of all kinds trying to increase the quality and quantity of their crops while never depleting their soil. In the course of his studies, Armstrong has also spent time visiting soil specialists, microbiologists, other sustainable lawn care companies, and mines producing leonardite, the primary source of humic acid a critical element for the health of any soil, among others. He has attended workshops and symposiums. He has thought long and hard and continues to do so. Photo above: a cross-section of a thick, green healthy and well cut lawn.

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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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Hurray Hurray the first of May - When I was a child, my mother (of British persuasion) would sing this bawdy rhyme on the first of May. And Bawdy is a very good description of the garden right now – all decked out in blossoms of extravagant colors and scents trying to attract pollinators so that it and we can move on into the fullness of summer and towards the possibility of fall harvests. The birds and bugs, flowers and weather are exuberant. Even with some cold fronts moving across the high country and bringing late, spring snows, it feels easier than winter rain and snow.

You can understand why May celebrations around the world and throughout time are centered around the riotous abundance of this time of year, with music and dancing and many, many flowers representing the obscene riches. May-poles and maybaskets, spring lettuces, asparagus and strawberries, fill gardens and markets; poppies, roses, lemon blossoms and mock orange branches scent the very air around us. Photo Below: Carolyn Melf’s exuberant Iris Spring garden, in Paradise. Iris Spring boasts 650 different varieties of iris, which are in bloom now and open to the public to see from now until May 25th or so. Iris viewed now can be ordered or purchased now mid-June pick-up. Besides iris, the garden has a lovely display of azaleas, dogwood, peonies and roses just now. For more information on how to get there call 872-7771.

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