July Newsletter

Summer finds the nursery filling up with a wonderful selection of plants. Check out our inventory for the latest in availability. Inventory. There are a number of items we'd like to bring to your attention.

We have lots of native sages in stock now. One of the most popular, Salvia clevelandii 'Winnifred Gilman' is now available in four inch pots and one gallon containers. This cultivar of Cleveland sage has the sweetest fragrance to its foliage and beautiful violet-blue flowers. For sunny areas with good drainage, this drought tolerant shrub's fantastic floral display is a magnet for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

We have a good supply of non-native sages too, which offer abundant blossoms much of the summer. Sages are exceptionally attractive to bees and hummingbirds. Here is just a sample of current availability. Salvia darcyii offers large vermilion-red flowers and heart-shaped leaves, Salvia 'San Carlos Festival' sports raspberry-pink blossoms on compact foliage, Salvia 'Moonlight' with its soft yellow flowers against bright green leaves and new this year is 'Puebla Cherry' with its purple buds and glowing red flowers.

With flowers custom made for hummingbirds, Agastache is a terrific summer bloomer.  We have one gallon Agastache 'Rosy Giant' with its lemony scented foliage and spikes of rosy-pink tubular flowers. If it's hummingbirds you are after, California fuchsia with its abundance of tubular flowers is just the ticket. You can choose from ground hugging forms to mid size and tall varieties. They begin to bloom mid summer and carry through into the autumn. Most of the cultivars in stock now sport red flowers, but we also have a pink flowering selection from Mt. Burdell in Marin County called 'Marin Pink'

We have good availability on the native buckwheats, a group of free flowering, sun loving and drought tolerant perennials and shrubs. Important habitat plants producing pollen and nectar for bees and butterflies and seeds for birds and mammals. This year we are pleased to have a crop of saffron buckwheat with its gorgeous grey foliage and chartreuse-yellow flowers in flat-topped sprays. The buckwheats have the added feature of their flowers aging and darkening to beautiful shades of brown, from tan to russet to chocolate, which hold on through the summer into fall.

Another new item available now is apricot mallow, a desert species with its profusion of apricot colored blossoms. Bees just love their flowers and roll around in the cup shaped blossoms. If you are a fan of orange flowers consider the easy to grow Morrocan poppy, with gorgeous crepe-papery petals of soft salmon orange. This perennial is a dependable re-seeder and likely to be a friend for life, seeding about here and there in a nice way.

Cal Flora Nursery is open 7 days a week. Monday through Friday 9 - 5 and Saturday and Sunday 10 - 4 We will be CLOSED July 4th.