105 The Greenery
June 9, 2025
107 The Secret Garden
September 26, 2025
Notable Nurseries
Episode 2
W elcome to Episode 2 of note-worthy nurseries! Here, I bring you 3 nurseries that AP and I visited on our So Cal trip in 2021.
The first nursery is surrounded by ocean breezes, the second feels like it’s somebody’s backyard, and the third had me expecting a celebrity sighting!
Walter Andersen Nursery
3642 Enterprise Street, San Diego, CA 92110 • (619) 224-8271
Website • Facebook • Instagram • YouTube
T his nursery, family-owned since 1928, sits two miles from the beach and one from the San Diego Airport. A second location in Poway certainly did not exist when Mike and I lived there a bazillion years ago.
This view from in front makes the nursery itself look itty bitty. It ain’t.
Even the shop with all the knick-knack crap is big enough to house Bigfoot…who seems to be everywhere these days!!!
Reminds me of my childhood home: Humboldt County, where high numbers of Bigfoot sightings happen. Sure they do.
Take a look at these planted raised beds…
Nope! Not raised beds.
Look closer and you’ll see they are actually tables holding plants for purchase. Very nice! Anything but a boring table really tweaks my interest.
So does garden art of course. We visited 40 nurseries on this trip, and only this one had these giant butterflies for sale.
Jump ahead a few years to today, and finally I’ve seen them at a local nursery.
It can take years for a product available in So Cal to reach us here in Northern California. It’s the same from Oregon to California—there’s often a long wait.
What’s with the slowpoke buyers around here? Or is it the producers who delay rolling out their stuff in our direction? Maybe we’re too big a market and they have to gear themselves up for us.
Whatever the reason, Readers, to get ahead of the No Cal market, you will have to travel to nurseries far north or south of here. (But find your own Aunt Patti to copilot you. Mine’s taken.)
I love good signs telling me where I’m at…
Thank you, Walter Andersen! Signage can make or break a nursery visit.
Aren’t these Platycerium superbum (Staghorn Ferns) amazing?..
But they ain’t cheap—$249 for a medium size plant like this!?…
I had a Staghorn once—not at that price—thinking my 100-degree heat could do it no harm. Well it could, and it did. And it’s dead. I still have the chunk of wood it came on though as a memorial.
Enjoy more views of this impressive nursery, listed among the top 100 independent nurseries for 2024…
Our visit done, we headed back past Bigfoot and outside where we immediately felt the ocean breeze. Once again, reminding me of home…ocean, ocean everywhere!!!
Barrells & Branches
1452 Santa Fe Dr, Encinitas, CA 92024 • (760) 753-2852
Website • Facebook • Instagram • Pinterest
I f I didn’t know better, when we arrived at Barrells & Branches I literally would have thought it was someone’s home.
Even the parking lot.
Our quick visit proved there’s plenty to like here. But I was particularly impressed by this one thing: Barrells & Branches sure knows how to stage plants. Impeccably well done!
Just look at these stairs to plant heaven with wine barrels as plant display tables!
Sunset Boulevard Nursery
4368 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90029
M y expectations were high for this nursery—it’s located in L.A. on Sunset Boulevard, for Plantsake! We would be shopping with celebrities!
But just getting to the place did not make ME feel like a celebrity.
Sunset Nursery is located on a very busy intersection, and with my lead foot I kept missing the entrance. (Where’s a celebrity chauffeur when you need one?!)
We circled around a few times before finally getting in a back entrance—which is shared with a busy gas station!
When we finally pulled into a parking space and I got a good view of the place, my expectations got knocked lower than low. That could NOT be the entrance to a celebrity nursery! It looked absolutely lackluster for any kind of entrance.
It seemed so low rent, that when AP and I got out of the car we double checked that it was locked! (Think Pretty Woman at her apartment.)
Readers, this was no place any celebrity would shop. Why did I ever imagine they would even do their own plant shopping?
Now, I love a cramped nursery where you have to stand and in one place and twirl in order to take in jungles of plants in all directions.
But this was ridiculous!…
And yet gratifying too. With so many varieties crammed into small areas, you really had to focus to notice everything you’re seeing…
In fact the whole place was so small that the damn nursery sign shows up in almost every photo!
All things considered, I do give Sunset Nursery a note-worthy rating, because it didn’t pop ALL my bubbles. We did get safely in and out and no one stole our vehicle.
But it’s just too bad there were no celebrities. I could have educated them on All Things Plants and they would have realized how much I need my own HGTV garden show!
A girl can dream.
