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Thu, Mar 6, 7:30pm
We will jump-start spring with the joy and excitement of welcoming one of California's premier native plant horticulturists, Nevin Smith. This program will be a personal account of the joys and challenges of exploring the California wilds, working with their native plant treasures, and bringing them to California gardeners.
Nevin grew up in the hills of Sonoma County, in the '50s and '60s, exploring whenever he got the chance and growing to love the plants, animals, and just about everything else in the native landscape. He worked summers in his father's nursery, enjoyed it, but vowed to pursue something quite different. He followed a university path in political science, with B.A. at UC Berkeley and Master's at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. After returning to California in 1970, he worked, ostensibly just for the summer, at the old nursery, got caught up in a management crisis, and soon took up the life of a nurseryman. He developed a general interest in unusual plants and a specific interest in the natives he found in his travels, launching what has become a career in introducing new plants to gardeners and reviving the forgotten but garden-worthy.
Nevin managed Leonard Coates Nurseries from 1975 to 1978; he started Wintergreen Nursery with his brother Tim in late 1978, operating it first together, later alone, from 1978 to 1991. The nursery was almost entirely devoted to the new and unusual. He sold the nursery to Suncrest Nurseries in late 1991 and has been Director of Horticulture there ever since. In 2005, Nevin finished writing Native Treasures: Gardening with the Plants of California, which was published by University of California Press in 2006. It is a gem of a book that began as an outgrowth of articles he has written over the years about the native plants and plant groups that have most captured his fancy.
His articles have always been an eagerly-looked-for highlight of Fremontia and Pacific Horticulture. |
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San Francisco Botanical Garden's beauty and value as a major cultural resource are the result of a successful public/private partnership between San Francisco Botanical Garden Society and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.