ABOVE: Our staff designer, Daniel Nolan (top left), is one of Sunset’s five designers under 35 chosen to style the Sunset Home project at this year’s Sunset Celebration Weekend. What is the Sunset Home? It’s a reimagining of the former Sunset headquarters in Menlo Park inspired by the magazine’s 1940 – 1980 archives.
Daniel’s snapshots in the upper right and at bottom come from his forays to our growers’ grounds in San Diego County to pick out botanical treasures for the garden he’s creating. The design process has been under way for months now in preparation for the June 1 & 2 Celebration Weekend.
Daniel’s plan takes the best looks from Sunset’s archives while employing contemporary materials like Sunbrella fabrics and Trex decking. The result will be a current, water-conscious, design-conscious garden with graphic year-round appeal.
ABOVE: Choice agave specimens line up at our growing grounds in Rainbow Valley.
ABOVE: The wealth of materials at Daniel’s fingertips fed his inspiration. The Sunset Home’s outdoor spaces will be succulent- and palm-heavy, but will rely on classic boxwood forms and floral surprises to generate a modern exemplar of outdoor Western living.
ABOVE: At left, Daniel’s design sketches and plant lists mingle with design books. At right, Oscar de la Renta’s Dominican Republic garden informs Daniel’s process. Check out this interview with Daniel!
ABOVE: Starting from upper left, scenes from Guerrero Street include: a group shot of Saskia, Rodolfo, Flora, Clarke, Jim, and Laura; at middle left, Hank (The Plant Provocateur) and landscape architect Andrea Cochran; at lower left, Flora with Betsy Flack of The Garden Conservancy; and a lovely boxed kentia palm, Howea forsteriana.
Do you remember when our nursery was called Guerrero Street Gardens? How about when it was The Palm Broker, before Saul and Flora took over the business back in 2003?
ABOVE: At Guerrero Street, Laura Stratton, the manager of the nursery, holds Deuce. Deuce always rode along with Armando, our genius palm installer and driver of the Palm Broker truck (lower left) for deliveries. Neighborhood volunteers, below, install median plantings on Guerrero and Chavez streets that Flora designed and that the nursery supplied.
ABOVE, AT TOP: Architect Seth Boor of Boor Bridges Architecture, Flora, and Jim review the model of our new Jerrold Avenue nursery building in 2006. Construction shots follow. At bottom left a crew preps the root-ball of our big Canary Island date palm on Guerrero Street for its trip over to Jerrold for planting. At right, Flora and Juliana pose in blue helmets.
ABOVE: We planted big specimen palms in February, 2007, with a crane. Once the decomposed-granite mulch was laid down and the barn-wood paneling was mounted, the beauty of the new store began to emerge. At center right, business partners Saul Nadler and Flora pose as “American Gothic.” At bottom, Flora’s brother Moses Grubb led bike-powered carnival rides with Cyclecide as part of opening-day festivities, May, 2007.
ABOVE: On opening day for the new store in May, 2007, architect Seth Boor, who with his partner Bonnie Bridges designed the new store, poses with Saul and Flora at top. Below, Flora’s business partner Saul and his wife Susie Nadler of The Cutting Garden smile for the camera flanking Jason Dewees, staff horticulturist and palm specialist.
ABOVE: Try as he might, even handsome Clarke can’t upstage a blooming aloe hybrid (lower left). Is it the aloe’s brilliance that’s causing Jim to squint over his shoulder, or the bright sun of San Diego County’s Rainbow Valley, home of our growing grounds? At lower right, Armando, Rodolfo, Shaun, and Sydney pose with a flower-bedecked cake. Just above, Sydney, Roger, Flora, and Jim take a rare breather on the Concreteworks chaises.
ABOVE: More scenes from our opening-day party, including, second from bottom-right, Eileen Hassi, owner of Ritual Coffee Roasters, grabbing fresh beans.
It’s been an amazing 10 years, and we’re grateful to you, our customers and friends! None of this garden goodness and beauty would be here if it weren’t for you.
If you’re planning a day trip to our nursery, consider making a stop at some of our favorite local spots plotted on the map below. To start super-close (across the street from us), All Good Pizza is home to some of the best pizza in San Francisco, plus amazing salads and sandwiches – it’s a fantastic lunch option.
There are so many cool places to visit in our quarter of San Francisco, you’ll want to arrange several day trips this spring! Click and drag to show the lower right on the map to explore our Bayview favorites.
One of the best places to garden is in the sidewalk in front of your house. Sometimes it’s your only place to get roots into the earth. The City of San Francisco has made it easy to create a sidewalk garden with a streamlined permit process, guidance on what plants to use and how to design and construct the cut-out sidewalk bed, and a set of videos discussing the process. Do come visit us at the nursery for advice on plants for your microclimate and how to design your beds.
Lots of sidewalk landscapes have been taming the concrete jungle and greening up San Francisco over the past few years. Some of the best ones are the result of an entire block of neighbors working together to create a landscape design with coherent colors and textures and host plants for beneficial insects and birds. A Community Challenge Grant from the city might help fund your neighborhood project if you’re lucky! If you’re thinking of planting a street tree, going large with a sidewalk landscape can be the way to go.
Besides bringing neighbors together and bringing you the pleasure of nurturing flowers, wildlife, and greenery, sidewalk landscaping helps street trees thrive and allows rainwater to filter into our soils rather than flood our sewers and streets. Flooding sewers can pollute the bay and ocean, but rainwater filtering into our soils helps support our urban forest and can even reduce your garden irrigation. What a great trade-off!
ABOVE: A beautiful metal screen border guides pedestrians and allows runoff from the sidewalk to flow into this young sidewalk landscape. The magenta flower is Cistanthe grandiflora and the orange is an arctotis variety, while the strappy plant in the right corner is a New Zealand flax, Phormium.
ABOVE: This more formal approach places low hedges behind metal railings with ball finials. The concrete edging would not be ideal for capturing sidewalk runoff.
We’re so lucky to have a streamlined process for sidewalk gardening. Get your neighbors together and make your own beautiful garden in that monotony of gray!
In October Flora was honored in the first annual American Made Awards by Martha Stewart. She was recognized in an amazing group of 11 artisans, designers, craftspeople, and entrepreneurs from across the United States.
The goal of the awards is to highlight rising stars whose work shares the quality, beauty, inspiration, possibility, and creativity embodied by Martha. It’s also an effort to spotlight craft and manufacturing taking place in the United States.
As part of the celebrations, Flora taught a workshop at Grand Central Station’s Vanderbilt Hall in New York with her friend, Stephen Orr, the garden editorial director for Martha Stewart Living.
Take a peek below at the article about American Made and Flora on the iPad version of Martha Stewart Living. We think a subscription would be a fantastic gift for your favorite iPad user.
ABOVE: Staff designer Daniel Nolan’s mounted dyckia garden nabbed a vivid shot in the article.
ABOVE: The honorees included furniture makers, a baker, a sculptor, a candle-maker, an urban farmer, a seamstress-designer, ceramicists, hoteliers, cheesemakers, and a high-tech artrepreneur.
On Saturday, December 15, 2012, our friends from The Workshop Residence and Recchiuti Confections scooted down from the Dogpatch to sell their artful gifts and goodies here at the store. They’re both sources for some of the best San Francisco has to offer – exquisite chocolates, linens, ceramics, useful artworks, and more! You will love their goodies. Visit them over on 22nd Street near Tennessee Street.
ABOVE: The Wilma Cup came out of Belgian designer Dirk Van Saene’s residency at The Workshop Residence in fall, 2011. Everything pictured here is from the Third Street Corridor.
ABOVE: All these treats are made in the Recchiuti Confections’ kitchen located in the American Industrial Center in Dogpatch, where Jacky and Michael Recchiuti also make their home. Dogpatch is home to their newly opened dessert café, Chocolate Lab, and Little Nib, their new store, as well.
Seen at upper left is perhaps the perfect gourmet gift – Recchiuti Confections’ Winter Dragee Sampler, with Burnt Caramel Almonds, Burnt Caramel Hazelnuts, Peanut Butter Pearls and Cherries Two Ways.
Fleur de Sel Caramels, at upper right, are an addictive balance of salty and sweet.
The Black Box, at center, is the box that launched a thousand obsessions. Michael Recchiuti’s original sixteen handmade chocolates include Lavender Vanilla, Bergamot Tea, and Michael’s signature Burnt Caramel.
ABOVE: Created by The Workshop Residence’s winter 2012 resident maker Lauren Dicioccio, the Thank You Double Rose tote bag, at left, and THANK YOU THANK YOU tote bag, at right, are machine-embroidered in taffeta fabric. The bags are sturdy and washable totes, intended for daily use. The perfect THANK YOU gift, the totes replace the ubiquitous plastic bag with a friendly reminder to reuse and recycle.
ABOVE: Don’t you love these gorgeous linens? Graphic designer Jennifer Morla designed them during her spring 2012 residency at The Workshop Residence. She exploits the pattern beauty in the typographic fonts Blackletter, Avant Garde, and Eames Century Modern, applying them in a completely new way to create useful household treasures.
Our colleague Zann’s first article in print appears in the fall 2012 Pacific Horticulture magazine! It’s a beautiful story about the profound changes he made in his life by working on Alcatraz restoring its historic gardens. We knew Zann was a good writer from his blog about San Francisco gardens and plants, boZannical Gardens, and his other blogs reveal his eye for ironic detail and his talent for ikebana and garden design.
Many of you know Zann Goff from visiting the store. He’s often working with customers on special orders, creating beautiful container compositions, and keeping things running smoothly at the checkout desk.
Zann’s open heart and curious mind make us feel lucky to know and work with him. We hope you’ll get to know him here in the store and through his writing and gardening.
We, like so many of you, are madly in love with San Francisco. Being a part of this beautiful community is one of our greatest pleasures. Here you can read about some of our collaborations with our friends and neighbors.
On our bookshelf you will find a book by our friend Debra Prinzing, The 50 Mile Bouquet. She has written about folks who are leading the movement toward growing and using locally sourced flowers, many of them in Northern California. Her profiles include gorgeous photos by David E. Perry.
ABOVE: Flora and our own Susie Nadler, the linchpin of our Cutting Garden floral design practice, are featured in the book.
Debra shares our passion for dressing up our celebrations with flowers grown locally, fresh from the field. Pick up the book for inspiration! We asked Debra to share some of her top tips for enjoying sustainable floral displays.
Debra’s Eco-Friendly Floral Design Tips
Background: As more florists and designers discover the negatives of that green foam block (also called Florist’s Foam or Oasis), they are returning to some tried-and-true techniques for stabilizing stems in a vase. The problem with the foam is that it is a formaldehyde-based product that does not break down in landfills. Many designers I’ve interviewed express concern about breathing and/or exposing their skin to the material.
Alternatives:
Vintage and new flower frogs: (I started collecting these years ago and they’re easy to find at tag sales and vintage flea markets for under $5 or $10). Use and reuse!
Pebbles, glass beads, marbles
Excelsior fibers: Also called wood aspen, you can find this packing material through craft stores or wine shops. Insert a tangle of the fibers in your vase and then you can stick stems through the fibers to stabilize. When you’re finished with the arrangement – this can go into the compost pile with other clippings.
Chicken wire: I have a $15 roll of 15-in.by 5-ft .poultry fencing that I use over and over again. Just use wire clippers to cut off a 12-inch section of the wire so you have an approximate square. Form it into a loose ball to fit the interior dimensions of your container [see my first 2 photos of a wide-mouth, square compote]. If the container is shallow, use sticky clay (available in the floral department at Michael’s or other craft stores) to anchor the chicken wire in place. My second photo shows how I created a full, lush arrangement with winter greens from my garden and locally-grown organic tulips. This is the type of arrangement you would have traditionally seen stuck in florists foam – but the chicken wire does the trick beautifully!
Twigs/branches: I learned this technique from several designers I interviewed for The 50 Mile Bouquet. As a first step. arrange a framework of decorative twigs inside your vase, placing each one at an angle that crosses over the next. This interior matrix is then perfect for inserting other floral branches and foliage – and the twigs become part of the design. See photos 3 (twigs in vase) and 4 (finished arrangement with black-stemmed pussy willow, maidenhair fern and spring daffodils).
Other eco-design tips:
1. Use recycled containers and vases. My girlfriend stocks up on $1 glass vases at the Goodwill or Salvation Army and has them on hand all year long. When visitors come to see her amazing rose garden, she sends them home with a beautiful rose arrangement of just-clipped flowers and a recycled vase.
2. Use greenery from your own garden. Broadleaf or needled evergreen foliage, ornamental grasses, perennial foliage and herbs are all unique foliage sources – straight from your garden. If you buy flowers from the farmer’s market or another local source (many supermarkets are beginning to source from local flower farms, for example), add them to your own foliage to create a naturalistic, fresh-picked bouquet.
That term – fibershed – means the geographic range from which your fiber, dye, and fabrics are drawn and fabricated. It’s a notion like watershed or foodshed: the region through which our essential and potentially renewable resource cycles.
Our watershed and the water cycle within it are usually traceable. In the case of San Francisco, our municipal water comes from Yosemite National Park though an aqueduct to reservoirs in San Mateo County. Meanwhile, the watershed we actually inhabit, drained by the city’s creeks and lakes into the bay and ocean, persists amid pavement and parkland, and receives the effluent of our imported water and sewage treatment process.
Just as San Franciscans (and the vast majority of Westerners) subsist on imported water, so do almost all of us in industrial society clothe ourselves in imported fiber and dye. Costs aside, by drawing on locally sourced fabric constituents, we can attend to the very specific beauty of our own Bay Area habitat. We can make and wear that beauty!
We’re at a fascinating, even dramatic, moment in the flow of ideas about how our first-world societies are evolving. The fate of the earth, the direction of change, the risks of complacency – they’re all up for fervent discussion right now. Rebecca Burgess makes a wise and moving contribution to that discussion.
ABOVE: Staff designer Daniel Nolan’s mounted dyckia garden nabbed a vivid shot in the article. 
ABOVE: All these treats are made in the Recchiuti Confections’ kitchen located in the American Industrial Center in Dogpatch, where Jacky and Michael Recchiuti also make their home. Dogpatch is home to their newly opened dessert café, 
ABOVE: Created by The Workshop Residence’s winter 2012 resident maker Lauren Dicioccio, the Thank You Double Rose tote bag, at left, and THANK YOU THANK YOU tote bag, at right, are machine-embroidered in taffeta fabric. The bags are sturdy and washable totes, intended for daily use. The perfect THANK YOU gift, the totes replace the ubiquitous plastic bag with a friendly reminder to reuse and recycle.
