A Grower Perspective

 Today is Friday and every Friday on the way to work I stop at the café and get my Friday treats to take to work. I know the two baristas who work the counter at the café and we talk about plants and what they did the night before (played Scattagories and drank blueberry beer). They are young and I love to hear

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The weather has been strange this year, to say the least.  Today's weather was no exception.  It's almost May.  We've just had some gorgeous warm spring weather.  And yet today, hail.  A crazy few moments of hail.  It was so loud on our metal roof that sitting in my office upstairs, I felt briefly that I was sitting within a snare drum.  Thankfully it didn't last long and there was no damage.  But it leaves you wondering, when it comes to weather, what in the world is next?

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Today is the 28th of April, midway through an unpredictable month of spring coming and then reverting back to winter. We actually had hail today. At the nursery we are creating a crazy quilt of wonder. The quilt is what we call GroundWorks. GroundWorks is front and center in the nursery, it is the ‘see what we have' spot, the place where gardeners and landscapers can walk around and play pick. It is part of my job to create it but the more I try to do it the more it seems like it is a place of everyone's input and creation. We line the aisles with flowering trees, we stitch in smaller evergreens, we patch together the grasses and daylilies. What won't fit here will be lovely there and so on. It sounds like a mess but it carefully and naturally comes together and looks unbelievable. String is laid out so every plant is placed in a very orderly way. As we sell plants others must fill in and it doesn't always go in a planned way.  That's what makes it crazy and unpredictable and gorgeous, especially looking out the second story window. A lot of flexibility is required laying out plants, some give and take between the ‘designers', and an observation of what is ‘looking good'. Come look, all the Rhodendrons are just starting to bloom now and soon we will be glowing in living color.

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I own a nursery so people are always surprised that I am a near novice when it comes to plants.  (Don’t worry, we have plant experts here! My role is marketing and administration.) Through the years I’ve noticed there is much variety in the color and texture of plants but I guess I never really paid attention to the vastness of differences. While plant enthusiasts have always known this, I just didn’t tune into the small color and textural details one notices when you study these plants up close.

However, this has become so much more apparent to me as we’ve begun to build our photo library. Plant photography has become a top priority for us. It is a massive job to build up our photo archive when you consider the sheer number of varieties we grow

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For those of you who only shop nurseries in the spring, you are short-changing yourself. It is really ideal to visit nurseries several times throughout the year. If you make an annual pilgrimage in spring, you are only seeing the things that bloom or look their best at that time. If you don't shop nurseries in, say March, you might miss the beautiful blooms of Pieris. The same goes if you don't shop nurseries in June, July or August. Miss this summer window and you miss the color offered by Cistus, Crocosmia, daylilies and Rudbekia. And the list goes on.

Another thought - visiting a nursery like ours (Pleasant Hill Nursery) or any other commercial grower-type nursery in late spring may seem

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