Cambria Nursery

Cambria Nursery and Florist is one of the better all purpose nurseries in our part of the central coast. A destination type nursery with display gardens, a great selection of plants, a florist, gift shop, and events.  A few weeks ago Gabe was offered the opportunity to advertise our services by designing one of their display gardens.

The garden area he chose was a large circular amphitheater where events are held.

It was in dire need of help.  It had lots of empty space and a mix of old overgrown plants. But the hardscaping was nice and it is an interestingly shaped space so it was fun to design.

Since it is sort of a half circle shape I suggested that it be planted in a rainbow pattern.  Gabe’s response was that I had better not design it that way and I had to agree that it was sort of a corny idea.  But then I accidentally, sort of designed it that way anyway.  Not exactly.  It isn’t a perfect prism or anything.  But there is a color theme thing going on.  Blue and Gold to the left leads into orange and red and then fuchsia and purple. Oops.

Gabe and the crew removing the old plants.  The only thing I kept were some shrubs and small trees and a big clump of what I thought was Lysimachia ciliata but now looking that plant up the leaves aren’t right.  Well…it will be a surprise then. This is why as a designer I like just pulling everything out and working with a clean slate.  It is easy to misidentify plants when they are not in bloom.

Everything is in place and Victor is hard at work getting them all in the ground. I’m pretty happy with the blue and gold mediterranean theme going on in the left hand side of this garden. That is Stachys byzantina ‘Primrose Heron’ in front of Victor and the large gold shrubs to the left are Caryopteris X clandonensis ‘Worcester Gold’.

One of the great things about designing in a garden center is if a plant you ordered was not available you can just go pillage from the nursery stocks!

The area around the fountain became a succulent garden.  Normally we wouldn’t plant so close together but we wanted instant results for this garden. The main specimens in this garden are Agave ‘Blue Glow, Yucca ‘Bright Star’, and Agave ‘Shark Skin’ surrounded by a bed of Echeverias and Aloes.

I’ll go back to take more photos once the garden has grown in a bit.  Or if you are visiting the central coast go check out Cambria Nursery and you can do some shopping and see one of my gardens in person!