Garden Geek Updates for the Week of January 5th

Happy happy new year, our fellow plant nerds! 

Garden Geek Updates for the week of January 5th 2015:

We have a biiiig order of Annie's Annuals arriving this week, likely in on either Thursday or Friday. Lots of fun goodies - big selection of sweet peas and poppies (including some new varieties!) for your winter gardens, some new succulents, and much more! If you have any special requests, be sure to email us with those by Tuesday (1/6/15) evening.

We should also be getting some more of the always popular ornamental kale and spiral grass later this week as well! And possibly some new and funky herbs and winter veggies - we'll know for sure in a day or so and will update accordingly.

We totally embraced this spirit of 2012 (a joke, get it?!?!) and finally started an Instagram account! Yay! Follow us there for daily photos of botanical goodness.

We are starting up our first new design project for 2015! A client in Los Angeles just got her turf removal rebate approved, and we are helping her design her new lawn free (ditch the lawn!), native plant, low water, awesome looking landscape! If you are interested in having us help you do the same, email us!

In the spirit of the new year, we put together some fun 'garden resolutions' to inspire your dirt digging this year. Check out our post for more info!

Speaking of new years resolutions, we are going to try to make sure we post a weekly update each and every Monday! If you are interested in staying on top of our latest breaking news, you can sign up to get these posts emailed to you (check out the form on the right side bar!) or follow us on Facebook.

Wishing you a happy and productive first week of our new year!

-Brande and the Johnnye Merle's team

Plants of the Month Club!

We are very excited to announce Johnnye Merles 

"Plants of the Month Club" 

starting this September!

What is it?

Plain and simple: 10 plants delivered - that’s right, DELIVERED - to you each month!

We take the stress out of thinking, choosing, driving and planning! We’ll bring you a mix of unique and unusual plants each month that are picked for your garden, keeping your landscape looking fresh and lively!

Best of all? It’s only $75 a month!

The smart way to keep a garden looking fresh and full is to maintain it consistently, each month. By adding a few plants here and there, swapping out annuals as they die back, and so forth, you will save money by avoiding ‘big re-plantings’, and keep your garden looking fresh and interesting.

We’ll learn the specifics of your garden - your style, light (full sun or shade), water requirements, etc - and bring you a fun mix of plants each month to fill in those spots in your garden that need a little extra love. You can always email us with special requests that we will try to fill as well. 

Johnnye Merles is a unique nursery located in Old Town Orange, CA. We specialize in plants that are unique, unusual, drought tolerant and eco-friendly. We have been designing gardens in LA and Orange county for close to 15 years now! The “Plants of the Month Club” gives you the expertise of award winning design and plant knowledge at an affordable rate AND keeps your garden looking consistently good. We even have an option that takes ALL the work out of your garden for you too!


Options:

10 plants hand picked and delivered to your door, only $75 a month!*
10 plants hand picked, delivered and PLANTED for you, only $95 a month!*

 *For addresses within an approximate 25 mile range of Orange, CA. For locations 25-40 miles from Orange, please add $10. This program is for our customers local to Orange, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties.

More info:

Your monthly payment will be charged to a credit card number you provide, or you have the option of mailing in a check each month.

You can cancel your “Plants of the Month” membership at any point with 30 days notice.

Deliveries are typically made on the last two Friday’s of the month. A specific day (3rd or 4th Friday of the month, for example) will be planned out with you to best meet your needs.

How to sign up?

Email us for a membership form!

Sign up soon - deliveries are starting in September!

More design work...

I finally uploaded some photos from another recent design project. This residence is in Corona Del Mar; the homeowner, Jenny, is a long time client - we first worked with her sometime back in '03 or '04, we think, but the years get a little blurry!

For Jenny's home, we provide a maintenance, going in about two or three times a year with new, fresh plants, helping with pruning and planting and sprucing things up in general. Her landscape is one that is fairly mature - again, some of the plantings we brought in are six or seven years old now - but a little 'fluff' a few times a year keeps a garden interesting and looking its best.

Jenny's landscape started out very English/traditional cottage when we first planted it. In the years since, we've incorporated more and more drought tolerant succulents, some fun tropical specimens, and a small veggie and herb garden for her four year old son.

These type of landscape projects are always fun for us. It's really rewarding to get to see a garden design mature and age and to be able to maintain and tweak it over time, not to mention the fun in keeping long lasting relationships with clients!

If your yard need a 'fluff' or a makeover, please don't hesitate to contact us. And don't forget, we also have a Garden Design Special this month, so if you have been thinking about recruiting some help planning your garden, now is the time to do it!


Our garden helper Harrison. The garden itself is about twice as old as this four year old!



Front walk way headed to the front door, which is planted with a mix of perennials, succulents, annual color and background height such as phormiums, cestrum and acacia.



Close up of some plantings - echeveria, sedums, euphorbia and a varigated iris in the background.



Another close up: geum, lavender, aeoniums, rosemary, euphorbia and loropetulum all live happily together!



One of my favorite spots in the garden: a semi-shady area where ferns, grasses, anemones and hydrangeas fill up the landscape!

New stuff...

So, we got LOTS of new plants in this Friday. As in, seriously, a LOT. I wasn't in when the trucks arrived late Friday, so you can imagine my surprise (dismay?) when I got the nursery Saturday AM and discovered this waiting for my attention:



All those plants on the ground for as far as the eye can see? All new. Five hours later, I finished pricing and displaying everything...but it was worth the effort, as we have some intensely cool stuff out in our gardens right now. I'll post some specifics later, but trust me, it's well worth your time to pay us a visit soon!

We've been doing a lot of garden design lately too. If you feel overwhelmed about what to get for your garden and how to set it up, shoot us an EMAIL and we can help. We have a special going on this month, for plant orders over $250, we'll come out to your house to see what you need, pick out plants for you, give you a discount on the cost of plants, deliver them, and set them up/place them exactly where they should be planted. You pay for the cost of the (discounted!) plants and take care of planting them, we take care of the design, delivery and placement.

It's the deal of the century! Well, at least the deal of this month...

Design project

In addition to offering a great, diverse selection of plants, Johnnye Merle’s also provides top notch garden design services. Below is a project we just worked on this past week.



Above is the ‘before’ photo. For this project, the client wanted to help with a big area she recently had stone and brick laid out in. Having lived in the home for only a year now, this was one of her big ‘pet peeve’ areas; before the stone, it was a strange, elevated ‘platform’ featuring weeds and dirt! As it sits below a giant avocado tree and is in the direct line of sight from the other outdoor sitting area, we suggested she have it paved or set in stone, and turn it into a fun seating area with pots, a water feature and fire pit. Once she had the hardscape completed, she reached out to us for help with selecting pots and plants, placing and planting them, designing and building the water feature, and picking out garden furniture and accessories.

This is still a work in progress, but you can see from the photos below how much we were able to accomplish in one day! Last week, we helped her pick out a selection of pots that accented her garden and reflected her own design tastes, purchased wine barrels for the water feature, and we put together a plant selection for her as well.

Then, we put it all together - utilizing existing stones, bricks and random flagstone pieces, we created ‘risers’ for the pots, grouping them in interesting little vignettes. We are very big on using existing materials that a client might have - the previous homeowners left behind a huge selection of random stone pieces, so it was great to put those into use. The wine barrel water fountain also features lots of 'found' objects.

We also cleaned up and planted to flower bed areas that are adjacent to the patio area. We planted the pots using plants that are primarily drought tolerant and ‘architecturally interesting’, proving year round diversity in color and foliage structure. For the bedded areas, which are shaded and damp, we went with shade loving plants that could deal with the run off of water that happens because of the slope of the deck. Same goes for the water feature plants, which are in a shady corner that tends to stay moist.

(It was getting dark as we took photos - we’ll post better ones soon!)



'After photo'; not the best shot, sorry!



Water feature - we built this using wine barrels, a galvanized tub, some rain gutter pieces and a small water pump. We love how it turned out!



Potted plant design



More potted plants - notice how we utilized existing stone materials to give the pots more height and to 'polish off' the groupings.

In addition to providing the design work and plant selection, partnering with Johnnye Merles on a garden design project can also SAVE you money. For this project, for example, the client was able to purchase pots at a wholesale price, saving considerable money, and likewise the cost of plants was discounted since she was also utilizing our design services. Plus, collaborating with a garden designer can help to avoid mistakes - small and large - than can sometimes cost money as well!

We’ll post more photos once the plants take root and fill out a bit more, and we find the perfect benches and chairs for our client...

If you are interested in our design services, please feel free to email us for more information!