Dahlias are a wonderful story of fortitude and transformation – a sort of visual rags to riches, and proof that beauty comes from within – deep within. A dahlia begins life as a wrinkled, misshapen tuber - a bit like an old sweet potato you forgot in the back of the bottom drawer of the fridge – but which, given the right conditions and care, grows up to be a stunning, long legged and confident Beauty Queen. Some dahlias could even be classified as Drama Queens. They are one of the stars of the late summer garden – coming into their own in August and blooming happily through first frost. Photo above: a dahlia tuber with one season’s growth.

Long-time members of the Chico community, Joan Eisenberg and Brian Rea grow a great many things in their garden, a great many Dahlia’s among them. And when I say “a great many”, in the case of the dahlias, I mean 91 individual Dahlia plants. Many gardens have secret nooks to discover or chance upon, Joan and Brian’s garden is in a league of its own in this way, taking the unsuspecting by total surprise. The further you move toward the back of their sweet, historic bungalow dating to 1910 in old-town Chico, the more you see the garden open before you – stretching the width and depth of not one but three historic bungalows, which Joan and Brian have purchased and renovated over the past 35 years. Photo above: a shining example of a Peony Form dahlia.

The history of the houses are stories in and of themselves, but “there had never been a fence between these three back-yards,” Joan tells me, and so it seemed natural to continue that way as she began to garden there. As she and Brian bought the houses on either side of theirs to fix up and eventually rent out, it soon became apparent that various long-term renters were happy to have Joan and Brian garden their back yards as well. And who wouldn’t be? Fruit and flowers, walking paths and peaceful seating areas, are open to all three houses. Photo above: The very uplifting site of the Gardenparty Flower cart open for business.
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Life is good. Really. November in the Northstate Garden sums up everything I love about living and gardening here – rich colors, abundant flowers and edibles, perfect weather – yes, even the rain - and nice people. After this past season of fire, economic chaos and seemingly endless politics – November in the Northstate is nothing short of a miracle.

On a crisp November morning, stand with a warming sun shining down upon you –in the middle of the Sundial Bridge in Redding watch the anglers and school children indulging in the beauty of one of our mighty rivers. Walk through the dappled sunlight beneath the sheltering trees of Chico’s Bidwell Park bikers and morning parents with children going this way and that. Walk the Feather River Fish Ladder in Oroville to see the salmon and steelhead struggling to make their way home. Hike Mount Lassen or the Trinity Alps. Take the drive to Lake Almanor. The greater Northstate Garden is one of the best inspirations by far for our own Northstate Garden.

In my garden – the leaves are beginning to change, some further gone than others. Persimmons hang fat and iridescent on the branches – sweetening up with the cool nights. I am cutting back the dead and the spent, top-dressing my beds with compost mulch. Some of the compost is from my own compost bin and spreading that always feels satisfyingly self-sufficient. Some people are sad at this particular cutting back of the year, but for me it feels freeing, things have gotten a bit overgrown and it’s time. And while we Northstate gardeners get to enjoy all four seasons we also get to enjoy the fact that while some things are now entering winter dormancy, others are just breaking their summer dormancy. Don’t be too quick to cut back plants that are still actively flowering – on these cold-morning/warm afternoons days the pollinating bees, butterflies moths and hummingbirds are still very active and they will reward your patience.
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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.

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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The saying goes: Where there is smoke there is fire, but over the past month it could have easily have been reversed – where there is fire, there is smoke – and sometimes quite a lot of it. After trying to comprehend the loss of whole households or the idea of thousands of acres burned or burning, my mind has turned toward the plants themselves – the forests and gardens full of plants. Photo above: Smoky Sunrise in the Northstate.

I wonder if they too know somehow – can sense rather than smell or see the smoke through the increased particulants and pollution in the air? Do they know there is increased risk of damage or mortality and do they take measures to protect themselves or more specifically to protect their seed? It is well-known that plants under stress including drought and disease will, if at all possible, throw all of their reserves into flowering and setting seed in order to assure their next generation. Do plants that sense fire do the same? Some evidence also suggests that smoky conditions might be beneficial to plants in areas of otherwise intense summer sun and heat because the smoke reduces the intensity of the light. Furthermore, the increased carbon dioxide in the air is used by the plants to produce sugars and other foods. The larger scale climactic effects of the smoke are another story. Photo above: the magnificent Humboldt Lily in Bloom in Carolyn Melf’s Paradise Garden in mid-June.

Recently I walked the grounds of a home that burned to the ground in the Humboldt fire in mid-June. It was the home of friends. Right after the gut wrenching first impression of what an entire house burned to the ground looks like, I was immediately struck by what was not lost – or not lost entirely. The gardens. A fire that burned long enough and hot enough to diminish a washer and dryer to melted metal had not killed the blue oaks nearby, rather just licked their feet. The new green growth shooting up from the bases of charred cistus plants and Rose of Sharon brought me to my knees – to check for life in the crown and along the stems of all the gardens’ plants. The roses, which were grafted hybrid teas may not come back from above the graft, but still. The sight of bright new growth in the midst of a blackened landscape was a small but significant miracle in my eyes. Photo above: A Northstate Wildfire, late June.

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Due to the ongoing wildfire coverage, this week’s In a Northstate Garden is a repeat from earlier this season. We will return to our regular on-going programming the weekend of July 5th and 6th.

Julie Nelson has a jones for daffodils, and so she told me in our first correspondence about her garden northeast of Redding. Over the years, she and her husband, Jim, and sons, Paul and Soren, have planted some thousands of Narcissus of all kinds in their garden. (Photo at left: Soren, Julie, Jim and French-exchange student Florian, who is living with the Nelsons this year.) The bulbs start blooming before Christmas (the early tazetta type Narcissus such as Paper Whites) and finish in April. Julie and Jim are both professional botanists – she works full-time for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. As a family the Nelson’s are engaging and thoughtful: they like to discuss politics, the natural history of our region, Garrison Keillor and good food. They name roosters for head’s of state and using plays on words. They are as warm and easy-going as the Narcissus genus - and the home garden - they so clearly love. (Although Paul, the elder brother, now lives in an apartment in the city and it makes Julie wonder if she did not make him dig one too many holes for bulbs.)

The Nelsons moved to their several acres of blue oak woodland in 1989 and created their garden on the red dirt left over from the construction of the house. “My garden consists of anything that thrives in this challenging climate–lots of Mediterranean things, lots of natives, bulbs, old shrub roses, and volunteers,” she told me. The whole garden – including large chicken run, enclosed vegetable garden, mixed borders of perennials and shrubs, and lemon and pomegranate trees closer to the house - is nice. But visiting in spring, it is easy to see that not only the sheer number of Narcissus but also their generous and deft placement in the landscape, is outstanding.

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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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