A friend recently chided me that the tag-line for my program should perhaps be celebrating the art, craft, science and labor of gardening ….the emphasis of course being on the labor aspect when he said it. There is much happening and much labor to be done in the garden this time of year - excuse the pun(s), but these are after all labors of love and there will be many fruits from our labors throughout the seasons to come. May’s fruits include so many of our wonderful ornamentals coming into their own - roses and clematis perhaps crown the month of May in their profusion. Many good rose events are happening around the region this month from both the Shasta and Butte Rose Societies as well as others (see below). The Butte Rose Society, whose members annual Rose Garden Tour is May 14, reminds us that if you are preparing for a special garden event, you can have your roses looking their best by dead-heading and fertilizing 6 weeks prior to the event.

The edible garden is starting to bring forth warmer weather produce. Watering, deadheading, feeding your soil and weeding are now things to try to stay on top of as best you can, the more consistent you are now with these good habits (which does not mean overwatering or overfeeding) the healthier and more productive your garden will be throughout the rest of the season. (more…)

An arid summer is a fact of life for North State gardeners. It’s the dry side of our Mediterranean climate. But ever-increasing awareness around the need for water conservation and creative use and re-use of water (as well as all of our resources including time and money) is a fact of life no matter where you live or garden. Photo: The dry creek bed and its planted edges in Michael Cook’s Sense of Place and Lawnless garden in Chico. (more…)

The majority of this article was originally published in June 2008 profiling Jeff and Cheryl Armstrong and NutriLawn, Inc. their lawn care business based in Chico. I am re-publishing this with updated information about the company’s California Small Business of the Year 2008 award.

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 three 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.

Jeff and his wife are a complete team, and Cheryl runs the business side of NutriLawn, Inc. About four year’s ago, the Armstrong’s went to the Small Business Development Center at Butte College for help appraising their company in order to sell it. As fate would have it, the SBDC actually showed them how to fine-tune their business model and demonstrated what a strong company they had. The Armstrong’s did not retire, and thank the SBDC and Cheryl’s business head for the financial viability of his business. In March, the Armstrong’s were told they were to be awarded the 2008 Small Business Person of Year for Northern California (a district from Stockton to Oregon). They then learned that they had also been chosen as the Small Business of the year for the entire state of California. As such, Jeff and Cheryl are traveling to Washington DC in mid-May to attend the 2009 National Small Business Week award events, where only 100 or so small businesses from around the nation will be celebrated. “We really won when we first went to see the people at the Small Business Development Center at Butte College,” said Jeff. “Their help transformed our business.” According to Butte College Small Business Development Center newsletter: “The U.S. SBA Sacramento District 2009/2010 Small Business of the Year Award is awarded to Jeff & Cheryl Armstrong for “Staying Power,” innovation, uniqueness of products and services, identifying a niche to compete competitively, responding to adversity during economic downturn,
continuous growth and financial stability, community contribution and “green’ business.” This is a couple who travel together, hunt and fish together, garden together and do good business together.
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Every year – about this time in the North Valley - the big spring bloom begins. And every year I think – it’s even more miraculous – even more lovely this year. Narcissus, hellebores, daphnes, camellias, magnolias, the first of the fruit trees – the beauty is abundant. And now that we’ve had some real rain and snow, I can actually enjoy the bloom with less worry. Close to 11 inches of rain – that’s how much rain I measured in my home garden in the month of February. The rain was so inspiring to me that some days I had to go check my rain gauge 2 or 3 times. I then ran inside, reported the newest numbers to my family and rushed to record the numbers in my journal. I know one good month of rain and snow will not reverse the past seasons’ unusually low precipitation. I know we are still in a drought – but this one good month sure doesn’t hurt. And when the March mountains are decked with snow and the valley is greening and damp, life in my garden feels just right. Photo: White Hellebores.

Although the first official day of spring is March 20th – hurray! - average last frost dates are still a ways away for most of us (early-April for the earliest of us) so don’t get too excited too quickly. Now is a great time for continuing to sow cold hardy vegetable seeds or planting out cold hardy perennials and shrubs to begin establishing before true spring. Now is also the time for feeding a balanced fertilizer to your trees, shrubs and lawns that are starting to show signs of growth. March 1st is a traditional date on which to feed citrus trees. And don’t forget that March 8th, we spring our clocks forward one hour. Photo: Looking across snow covered mountains from Mt. Shasta in mid- February.
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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.

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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