Have you noticed how the concept of beauty evolves as you grow older or as you garden longer? Just ten years ago, if you had told me that I would consider a bouquet of carnivorous plants as lovely a sight as I had ever seen, I would have replied (politely, I hope) that I was really more of a pansy, peony or poppy girl. So no-one was more surprised than I was when I recently encountered a bouquet of carnivorous plant spent flower heads and traps and I thought to myself that they were some of the most strikingly lovely plants I’d ever seen. It’s not that I have forsaken peonies, not at all. Rather, I can happily attest that one of the benefits of growing older as a gardener (and as a person) is that your concept of beauty deepens and widens to include all manner of beauty. Photo: A sample of David and Cathy Walther’s carnivorous plant collection, including the double-flowered, speckled white trapped Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Tarnok’.

David Walther, co-owner with his wife Cathy of Spring Fever Nursery in Yankee Hill, has been intrigued by carnivorous plants and been growing them in his home garden for close to 10 years. His collection currently includes many plants comprising multiple varieties of half a dozen or so species. I first saw David’s collection in mid-spring, when a handful were beginning to bloom. I visited them again in late-summer and their dramatic colors, structures and over-all interest were still going strong. While many carnivorous plants have very attractive and showy flowers, it is the traps and the spent seed heads that persist and that, in my opinion, hold multi-season interest for the gardener. Photo: Sarracenia flava, the tall plant with dangling yellow flower petals, in bloom and Sarracenia leucophylla x. willisii ‘Dana’s Delight’ in bud.
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Lynette Gooch loves lavender. All kinds of lavender for all kinds of reasons. In the United Kingdom the gardening world has things known as National Collections, wherein when a specific garden has more species or varieties of any one kind of plant than any other garden, they can become designated a National Collection. Private gardens and gardeners are as likely to hold National Collections as larger public botanic gardens. In the United States, we do not have such a scheme, but if we did, Lynette Gooch and her husband Richard might well hold the National Collection of lavender with their 207 different named varieties of lavender at the display gardens in Whitmore: Tuscan Heights Lavender Gardens.

Grown as a culinary and medicinal herb throughout the world, throughout time, lavender (Lavandula) is a genus comprising multiple species and hybrids. Species of the genus originate from the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia, and the genus thrives in the Mediterranean climate of the North State.

The Tuscan Heights’ story started in 1999 when Lynette and Richard, farmer/gardeners at heart, were looking around the North State with possible re-location in mind. Living in Roseville at the time, Lynette is from Calaveras County originally and of strong Italian descent, with fond memories of the large family production garden she grew up helping to tend with her father. “Of five kids, I seem to have been the most gardening inclined, which I think has helped me out here!” she tells me the warm summer day I toured around the gardens. “We were about to leave and head home when Richard by chance picked a local discount classified paper and happened to read about land in Whitmore. ‘Where’s Whitmore?’, he asked me. So we drove up, I got out of the car, looked around, breathed deeply, kicked at the dirt with my foot and said - This is it. Let’s write the check.” Although the sloping land was covered in poison oak, manzanita and blackberry, Lynette knew she was home. The Fern Fire had devastated the area 12 years earlier, and Lynette could see that the soil had begun to recover and was ready for any garden she might want to grow. Neither she, the land nor Richard knew just what that garden would become.
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So, you still have a little spring fever? Have a hankering for something special - out of the ordinary? Maybe you saw a cool plant you were unfamiliar with at a garden on one of our regional garden tours, or in a magazine. Sometimes, one of our outstanding local independent nurseries will do the trick and assuage your hankering: a stolen moment, between hectic errands, spent wandering around a quiet nursery looking at plant tags will often lead to new discoveries. Photo: Black Widow (or Mourning Widow) Geranium phaeum.

Beyond garden tours, spring is also the time of year when independent growers with specialty collections will bring their treasures to regional farmers markets, or better yet, will hang a little sign outside their yard that reads: Open Garden and Nursery Stock Sale This Weekend – Rain or Shine. Some people’s hearts race at the thought of a tag sale and the treasures it could hold, mine races at the thought of a grower’s garden open day and plant sale. Photo: An inviting entrance to Spring Fever features a generous gate covered in blooming wisteria.

I first made the acquaintance of David Walther while I looked over his specialty perennials at the Saturday Chico Farmer’s Market. It was a chocolate-color-splotched geranium leaf that caught my eye – I do love a true geranium – and when the plantsman told me its name was Black Widow geranium, well, you know how it went from there. I had to have it. I gave him the last of the $ in my pocket and juggled the pot between my canvas bags of lettuce, eggs and fresh artichokes. “I am having open days at my nursery garden the next three weekends,” he said, sort of off-hand, as I left.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Photo: David Walther outside of one of his nursery hoop-houses.
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