Here at Flora Grubb Gardens nursery in San Francisco, we offer rare and exceptional plants from around the world for your home and garden. We specialize in plants that thrive in the Bay Area’s mediterranean climate, including palm trees, protea-family plants, succulents, and many more.
Every year in the springtime we receive a special order of rare and unusual Japanese maples from Oregon, and we get so excited when the truck arrives!
Down at our farms in the Rainbow Valley, we grow over a dozen varieties of trailing succulents, perfect for hanging baskets, vertical gardens, and container gardens. All of these cuties are in stock now!
Here in the Bay Area, when the acacias start showing their fireworks of delicate golden blooms, we know that spring is just around the corner.
Even in cooler weather, the bougainvilleas are popping all over town, putting on a crazy show with their showers of bright blooms. We just brought a bunch of unusual bougainvilleas up from the farms. Come get yours!
Haworthias, tough-as-nails miniature succulents that look like dollhouse agaves or aloes, are perfect for making jewelbox compositions in little tabletop pots.
Aeoniums, with their sweetly symmetrical rosettes, whimsical leggy growth habits, and wide variety of foliage colors and patterns, are so much fun to grow and collect. We've almost always got dozens in stock at Flora Grubb Gardens nursery in San Francisco.
The rare and mesmerizing Aloe polyphylla is finally back in stock! We have a limited supply of baby 4-inch spiral aloes. Watch this little cutie grow into a mesmerizing spiral.
Among the proteaceae there is a vast variety of exotic flowers, and many of these plants have a long blooming season, especially here in coastal California, where the weather mimics their native South African and Australian coastal landscapes.
Phlebodium aureum 'Blue Star' fern is one of our favorite versatile plants, growing happily in the Bay Area either indoors or out.
Late winter is when leucadendrons are at their most stunning, showing their vibrant color and putting out shiny new growth. Flora Grubb Gardens nursery in San Francisco is always stocked with a rainbow of different varieties ready to come home with you!
Pittosporums have an amazing superpower: the ability to quickly grow into a screen that’s dense enough to disguise a wall or create some privacy, but still feels light and airy. Read on to learn how to use these versatile plants to make your own screen in your garden.
Passion flowers are exotic and aggressively detailed, with a flamboyant artistry that seems almost cosmic, like they come from another planet. Check out some of the varieties we often carry at Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco.
With drought conditions upon us, we're feeling grateful that so many gorgeous low-water plants thrive here in the Bay. Succulents and cactus love life in coastal California, which makes them a great un-thirsty choice for your garden.
There are many challenges when planting a garden, including considering damage to retaining walls, sidewalks, foundations, and underground utilities. Often the easiest way to overcome these tricky spots is planting small plants that won’t have a large impact on nearby infrastructure. But what if you need a larger, more substantial element?
Parajubaea is a genus of palms with graceful crowns of swaying, silver-backed fronds and edible nuts. The two species that we grow down at Grubb & Nadler come from seasonally dry, cool mountain valleys on the western slope of the Andes in Bolivia. This is probably why they thrive in California, while struggling in other palm paradises like Hawaii and Florida.
Staghorn ferns, also called elkhorn ferns, are aptly named for their upright forked fronds which resemble antlers. These upper fronds, named fertile fronds, are elevated to release spores for reproduction. The fertile fronds often have an attractive matte white or grey dusting to them, and many have wonderful rippled textures like mushroom gills.
In 2017 the Flora Grubb Gardens crew was invited to explore a magical lost world of plants in Bolinas, California. Here’s the story of that day and the rare and unusual plants we brought home, now at last ready for your own gardens!
The popular cactus Echinopsis pachanoi (syn. Trichocereus pachanoi) is known by many names, most commonly ‘San Pedro.’ This cactus is fairly common, and no doubt you’ve seen it around, but if you dive deeper there’s so much to learn.
The giant bird of paradise—sometimes known as “banana leaf plant” or “banana palm” (although it is neither a palm nor a banana!)—can grow both indoors and outdoors here in the Bay Area. It has a lovely breezy tropical look, but unlike most tropical-style plants, it doesn’t need much water to thrive once it’s established. So it’s a great choice for drought-prone areas and low-water gardens!
We can grow many kinds of palms in our Bay Area gardens — palm trees, shrubby palms, bamboo palms, little foliage palms — lucky us! Our guide to everything palm in the Bay Area has all the info you need to make the best selections for your garden.
The spectacular palm crowning this corner of Flora’s Berkeley garden is a rarity called Brahea clara—the clara palm. It’s a great palm for the Bay Area, from the SF fogbelt to the heat of the East Bay.
Plant genera in the Protea family (“Proteaceae”) include Banksia (Australia), Grevillea (Australia), Hakea (Australia), Isopogon (Australia), Leucadendron (South Africa), Leucospermum (South Africa), Protea (South Africa). These plants in the Proteaceae share several requirements and characteristics in common.
At Flora Grubb Gardens, we only offer citrus trees that are proven to thrive in San Francisco gardens. We are proud to offer dwarf citrus trees grown by Four Winds Growers.
Getting to know your soil is key for a healthy, vibrant garden, and it is relatively easy to determine on your own with a few simple tests below. Some soils are fertile and ready for planting, but other soil types may need a little assist.
Watering is one of the most meditative gardening tasks. You’re giving your plants their lifeblood while you admire, inspect, worry over, harvest from, and revel in your garden. (See our discussion of indoor watering, as well.)
