We Say Goodbye
- Spray citrus and other tender plants with Cloud Cover to give them some protection from frosts.
- Empty birdbaths and fountains and cover them for the winter, to prevent water freezing and cracking the bowls.
- Transplant shrubs that need to be moved this month. It’s also a good time to transplant natives.
- Primroses and pansies will add instant color to pots and flower beds. Combine them with bulbs for an extended season of bloom.
- Spray for peach leaf curl with copper spray at Thanksgiving, New Years and Valentine’s Day to help protect trees from this damaging fungus disease.
We Say Goodbye
Thirty-six years ago my husband Dave and I moved to Willits from San Jose with our infant son, Michael. We bought a piece of property on Locust Street, moved into the house, and watched the rain pour down all that winter.
But the first of April, the rain magically stopped, and we opened Sanhedrin Nursery with plants in our front yard and a sales counter on our front porch.
Previously, I had owned a small nursery in San Jose for 6 years, where I had learned the nursery business. But Dave and I decided to leave the Bay Area and we came up to Willits when the local nursery, Fallen Leaf Nursery, went out of business.
So we started a little nursery here in Willits. Of course it was a very different climate from San Jose, so the learning curve was pretty steep. With a much shorter growing season and a lot more cold and rain in the winter, we became acquainted with the challenges of being a gardener in Willits.
As the farm advisor told us, he didn’t know anything about diseases until he moved to Mendocino County. So we had a lot to learn. Our library grew and grew and so did our knowledge.
Of course we took The Willits News and advertised our fledging business in it. At that time the newspaper ran a garden column by Rosa Rugosa. But 2 or 3 years later, she retired. So I contacted Claudia Smith, the editor at the time, and asked her if she would like me to write a garden column for the paper. She agreed, and thus began a new career for me as a garden writer.
I decided to call my column, This Week in Your Garden. I posted a few gardening tips each week, which were timely things to do, and then wrote an article on some subject that was relevant to the season, like fruit trees in January and rhododendrons in May.
Every Tuesday evening, I sat down — originally at my typewriter — and invited my muse to inspire me to write an interesting article. It was not always easy, but somehow I managed to find a good topic to share each week.
In the late 1980s, my sister, Geri Hulse-Stephens, and I decided to put together a garden calendar using my garden tips and her illustrations. It was the early days of using computers for layout so I had to learn a lot of new skills to create a calendar. The result was four years of beautiful Gardening in Willits Calendars.
Over the years I have received many compliments on my articles. Almost every week it seemed like someone would tell me that they enjoyed my garden column. Some even said that they cut out the articles and saved them! But you know how that goes…
So in the last few years I started thinking about compiling them into a book. I decided to use my sister’s lovely illustrations, and began work to create a small book that was informative as well as pleasing. I titled it, A Year in the Garden: Gardening in the Willits Area.
The format that I have chosen for the book is to present a selection of my articles in a month-by-month arrangement. My articles focus on the vegetable garden, the orchard, shade trees, flowering shrubs, perennials and bulbs, as well as insect and disease problems.
I see this book as a gift to the community. For 36 years our goal has been to help our customers become successful gardeners, and this book continues that intention. Copies are available at Sanhedrin Nursery.
As many of you know, Dave and I have decided to retire and close Sanhedrin Nursery. We have really enjoyed being part of this community, and it is bittersweet for us to close and move on. We leave behind a part of ourselves and we are glad that we have been able to serve this community for so long.
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