Gathering Plants for the Show!

Today we took a field trip to RECON Native Plants down in IB to look at plants that we might use for our upcoming installation for the Spring Home and Garden Show. We picked out some beautiful flowering bulbs (including one rare gem that is a secret until the show!!), some flowering June Grass and some Red Monkeyflower that should be a great addition to the other gorgeous plants we picked out from Tree of Life yesterday.

It was so hard deciding on plants at both nurseries! Tree of Life has some gorgeous manzanita in all sizes (including some 5g Del Mar Manzanita that it was painful to pass up since, as Jeremy pointed out, they are native to the site of the show!). We decided at last on Pacific Mist and Carmel Sur, two of our favorites.

RECON has some great specimins available now including Giant Coreopsis (which is like a daisy out of a Dr. Seuss book) and some gorgeous 5g Yucca (both whipplii and shidigera). Not to mention all of the San Diego native Sages, Sunflowers, and other cool finds!

In the end I had to cut some great plants out simply to prevent the design from being too full! I will definitely be keeping them in mind for someone's garden though!

Pottery: Not just for plants anymore!

Try to install a landscape with only plants and you get the sneaking feeling that something is just missing... Pottery! Pots are a great addition to any landscape from modern to rustic and are much more than just fancy planters. A large glazed pot can make a lovely stand-alone focal feature, well sealed urns can be converted to make great rain barrels or small water features, and no patio is complete without at least one potted plant!

Courtyard Pottery in Solana Beach, owned and run by designer Tita Heimpel, is my absolute favorite resource for pottery in San Diego County. With a huge selection of glazed pottery ranging from huge imported planters to tiny hand-made tabletop treasures there is little that cannot be found at Courtyard, and if you don't see what you are looking for Tita will order it for you from one of her many suppliers.

Formerly located on Hwy 101 in Solana Beach, Courtyard Pottery has recently moved to a larger location almost directly across the train tracks to the Cedros Design District across from the Belly Up. After picking out your pottery you can head down the street to Cedros Gardens to pick out plants or over to the beach for a surf check!

Courtyard Pottery (858) 481-7687

http://www.courtyardpottery.com/ (under construction)

Las Pilitas Nursery

Whether you are looking for native plants for the garden or whether you're simply looking for a great source for CA native plant knowledge, Las Pilitas Native Plant Nursery is a great resource!

Their website is an outstanding resource for information with thousands of pages of information about native plant communities, proper installation and planning, and general plant information.

On the website you'll find an alphabetized encyclopedia of native plant species ranging from commonly planted cultivars to rare and endangered species that are hard to find even in the wild. You'll also find a great search engine that will take your zipcode and site conditions and produce a list of species suited to your garden's conditions.

Their two locations, in Escondido and Santa Margarita (near SLO), are just off the beaten path but well worth the trip to find not only some of our more common native landscape plants like Manzanita and Sages but also rarer gems like Leopard Lilies and SpiceBush.

Check out their website at http://www.laspilitas.com/ for more information!