Garden Inspiration: Get Fun & Funky with Talini's Nursery!

Talini's Nursery is a wonderland for fans of color and whimsy. Every item in the nursery seems to have a story, from their Mexican pottery (totally drool worthy, I want it all)....
....to Casper, their Horticultural Fetis Catus, and perhaps Talini's version of a Wal-Mart greeter. Again, I am not normally a huge fan of cats, but anything furry and rubbing up my leg in a garden setting seems to be getting my admiration lately, and Casper stole several moments.....and about twenty snaps from my camera.....because he is THAT adorable (those human folks pay big money for eyes that blue, don't they kitteh, kitteh?)

Continuing on...despite the kitty following me around, I spy....something awesome, and hip, and on my wish list! Yes, that would be an Urban Farmgirl vertical succulent box! Gardening up is the new "in" thing, and these boxes are super easy to get started! Simply take some cuttings from some of your existing succulents, shove them into the box horizontally, and wait until they grab hold- then hang! Even those of you with the brownest of thumbs can make these work. No excuses!
How cute is this? Mexican pottery bunny+ Urban Farmgirls pot+ a turquoise Fermob bistro set?! Um...pretty much = BEAUTIFUL! Ahem...you MAY just see this on the upcoming Arden Park Garden Tour.... That's right! Not only do they have an amazing selection of plants and garden decor', but they are also helping me pimp out my garden for my upcoming garden tour!

Seriously, they have something for everyone! From aquatic plants to natives, and don't forget those edibles....

....and an expansive selection of roses and fruit tree's.... .....and their collection of shade-loving plants pretty much leaves my jaw to the floor....

.....but their new succulents section kept me begging for more!

Perhaps this is my newest addiction? Because somehow as I was checking out this chair.... a brugmansia sitting behind it ended up in my cart and I took it home with me.... What? Me? Taking home a somewhat picky plant? Yeah, I do that.... a lot. But...the staff at Talini's were nice enough to give me several tips on keeping it happy in our weird climate. For instance, when I'm draping my citrus and avocado trees in Christmas lights to protect them from frost- I need to remember my new 'Charles Grimaldi' Brugmansia likes to be dashing in lights too (or perhaps draped in frost cloth, which they carry there too).... Plant Survival Hint: If you are unsure about how to take care of a particular plant, make sure you ask the staff at the nursery. Don't trust this knowledge to the staff at the big box stores.

Moving along.... *gasp* there's my other addiction: Annies Annuals & Perennials! Yep, Talini's carries my favorite selection of 4" pots from my favorite nursery in the Bay Area! You can save yourself a trip to Richmond, CA (although I highly recommend you make a stop there sometime because the nursery is totally awesome), and just buy your Annie's plants here!

photo credit: Talini's Nursery/Angela Pratt

I know, I know- there's so much awesome stuff here, and it's hard to fit it all into one blog post! But, I can't close out this post without showing you the new chicken coops they're carrying! Sacramento City has FINALLY passed an ordinance that allows people to keep up to three chickens in their backyard. Now the only thing standing between me and getting some chickens would be that husband-figure sitting on the couch next to me now. You know, the one that I said would be my absolute DREAMY KEN DOLL if it weren't for the fact that he hasn't given me the thumbs up on chickens? Yes, that guy. But maybe if he saw these fabulous new coops at Talini's he'd change his mind?!

Photo credit: Talini's Nursery/Angela Pratt

Designed and built by Greg and Brian of TWO FLEW THE COOP, Talini's is lucky enough to have the "Karma Coop" (on the left) and "Coop of the Rising Sun" (on the right). Talk about beautiful garden art!

Talini's Nursery is located at 5601 Folsom Boulevard, Sacramento CA 95819. For more information call (916) 451-8150, hours M-Su 8-6. Check them out on Facebook to keep up to date on new items and sales in the nursery!

Sneak Peak: Arden Park Garden Tour

Tonight I got to go on a sneak peak of the homes that will be in the Arden Park Garden Tour on September 17th. First of all, can I say that I can not wait until I retire and have the time and money to implement what these people have? Seriously, I liked my garden....UNTIL I visited the rest of the garden's on the tour. Now I am secretly plotting to become their new BFF's, just so I can hang out in THEIR gardens.....
The tour includes 6 homes in the Arden Park neighborhood. I was happy to see so many of them integrating edibles into their yards. Unlike me though, the edibles are all in the backyard. But most of them also don't have a corner lot like I do where a lot of my yard is in the front yard. Some of the people on the tour referred to me as "artichoke girl". Yes, that's me, I'm the one that has artichokes growing in my front yard (and I'm proud of it).

This tour made me realize how different we can all be as gardeners. Some love lawns for playing croquet, some are like me and can't wait to get rid of more lawn. Some are plant collectors- whether it be orchids, or fruit tree's. It was clear that I am the only 1) Certified wildlife habitat, 2) the only children's garden, and 3) the only person with bermuda grass. Yay! I'm not in competition with anyone else! haha!

My favorite garden on the tour is Mary's. She has the magazine perfect garden that we all want. Okay, I want her garden. I may have joked once or twenty times that I'd just like to retire in HER garden. It was that awesome.

This gate? Yeah, that's the entrance to her vegetable garden. How awesome is that?

On the other side of that gate is this: a dreamy vegetable garden full of several raised beds.

If it weren't for the fact that Mary was soooo nice, I would find something to complain about out of pure jealousy. But she was just as awesome as her garden was.

Plus, I love her cat. And I'm not a cat person.

And I loved her fence. Her fence! Man, up until now a fence was just a fence to me- but this is gorgeous. As much as I could have stayed all evening here, we needed to push forward to my place (which, by the way, I'm feeling rather "blech" about tonight after seeing these places). Now I am regretting yanking a majority of my summer vegetable garden to make way for fall (I think last week I said "I'm not gonna let a garden tour get me behind on my fall chores!" Yeah, wish I hadn't done that)

Our last garden on the tour is just around the corner from me. It is SUPER cute, full of edibles, and they appear to be the only garden in the Sacramento area that had a really awesome year with their vegetable garden. While the rest of us are cursing at our tomatoes, and yanking out our summer squash: their garden is still flourishing. (again, here I go with the jealousy)

Not only that, but if you turn around you see this. Don't you just want to dive in? It was kind of a hot evening.... and there was a big floating mattress nearby.....I was so tempted!

After the tour we went Elayne's home; she's a member of the garden club and was on the tour last year. She's lucky enough to be on a full acre, and although she's not on the tour this year we got to go hang out for some homegrown appetizers and some wine. We talked plants, politics, and about ripping out some of the lawn in our neighborhood parks to build community gardens. These were my kind of ladies :)

If you'd like more information on the Arden Park Garden Tour, please check out my previous post here. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door. The tour is September 17th from 10am-3pm. If you're a reader of mine and go on the tour, please come by and say hi to me. More important, feed my ego and tell me you love my garden (even if you don't). I may have some giveaways for you if you do :)

Alice in Wonderland Garden Party

Few things bring me as much joy as throwing a garden party for kids.
Thankfully my daughter shares in that joy, and has asked me two years in a row to throw her an Alice in Wonderland party for her birthday. She's smart, she knows that if it's an Alice theme, I'll go way over board. (she's right, by the way)

There are endless ideas when it comes to decorating for an Alice party. Unfortunetly, a lot of the items you have to make yourself- like the Tulgey Woods signs above that my sister-in-law and I made last year out of foam board.
The Cards are the easiest to make, just using paints and some construction paper on white posterboard. A reminder for posterboard projects though: make sure you turn off your sprinklers if you'd like to keep them for another year (lesson learned the hard way- but we got two years out of these guys so I'm not complaining!). Lanterns are the next easiest decoration, but they can cost a fortune. I've bought 5 or 6 nice ones over the last few years, but the rest I've found at Dollar Tree or end of summer sales at party supply stores (usually with the tropical or fiesta themed party decorations). If you're ever in San Francisco in the Chinatown district, you can get some really nice ones there for a decent price as well. The Cheshire Cat up in our redwood tree is another one of my hand painting jobs on foam board. I would never attempt this much detail on foam board again- cutting it out was a PAIN.

Caterpillar was also made out of foam board. He hung out in our large camillia tree surrounded by more lanterns. The Bread and Butter Flies decorated the hops arbor this year. They are from my absolute favorite part of the movie, when Alice meets the flowers.

Almost as important as the decorations are the activities. When it comes to throwing a kid party, you need to have lots of options in this department because they like variety, and never seem to spend a lot of time in any one area. Activities for this party included bocce ball, the new colorful hopscotch, chalk, bubbles, butterfly nets and magnifying glasses.

Water play is also very popular with kids, and they had a lot of fun playing with this activity table. The bird bath temporarily became Barbie's pool for the day, and we had a few half filled watering cans placed through out the garden for the kids who wanted to try their luck with plant care.

There was also a potting station, including a bag of potting soil, a few packages of seeds, a six pack of petunias and cartoon character themed plant stakes. The kids were given the freedom to plant the seeds or plants in the containers and take them home, or plant them anywhere in the garden they wished. Next spring should be interesting for us as there were over two thousand seeds for them, and every single seed was used!

Another fun project for them to do is a ladybug release. We had three packages of ladybugs this year for them to release in the garden (4500 ladybugs total). We've done this the last few years and the kids all seem to enjoy it. In the spring I have my daughter release a bag to help with the aphids, but in the summer they help more with the whiteflies (which we have tons of right now).

The best part of the release for me is seeing some of the kids that were scared of them just a couple years ago, will now allow the ladybugs to crawl up their arms and land in their hair.

Put it all together, and this is a recipe for FUN.

Arden Park Garden Tour

My neighborhood is having their 2nd annual garden tour on September 17th, and lucky me, I've been asked to participate. As much as I might be stressing about how "unconventional" my garden is, I'm also very excited to share some of my passions with complete strangers, and be able to highlight some of my favorite businesses in the process. The first thing I'm going to tell visitors: protect wildlife and protect the environment. I got my my garden certified as a wildlife habit through the National Wildlife Habitat a few years ago, and I'm very excited to help homeowners do the same with their own gardens. Step one in completing my certification was coming to a mutual understanding with the squirrels! If you live in Sac, you know exactly what I'm talking about!
The second thing I'm excited about sharing is how this is a KID friendly garden. My daughter taught me how to "let go" when it comes to a garden design (the word design is a loose term here- I have no design!). She's picked out half of the plants you'll see in our garden, and I heavily encourage her to consider this space her own. Our garden is also the best CLASSROOM I can offer her. If you have a youngster in your house and want help in getting them outside to enjoy it, please let me know! I'd be happy to share with you what has worked with my daughter, and please feel free to bring your kids to my garden (we are a kid-friendly garden, I won't freak out if they want to pick flowers or eat our tomatoes).

The 3rd thing I will be emphasizing will be LAWN REMOVAL. Yeah, unless you have a soccer team (small shout out to the Team Tigers, my daughters soccer team! Grrrr!), why do we have so much lawn?! To my dear neighbors, we're getting METERS. The cost of water will be going up for us and we have these expansive lawns that we NEVER use. Why not remove the lawn, switch to drip lines, and put in pretty flowers? How about some edibles? Even better: NATIVES! I'd be happy to share some of my favorite resources for doing this!

Interested in the tour? Here's the details!

Arden Park Garden Tour

Saturday, September 17th, 2011, 10:00am-3:00pm

Map and passport is handed out at 1213 Eastern Ave. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. For information/tickets contact last3lives@aol.com or call (916) 487-5445


If you're unable to make the tour, please visit some of my favorite businesses listed below (they will all have handouts, catalogs, etc available at my place on the tour). Not only do I stand behind the products these companies sell, but their websites and/or staff are some of the best around and have a wealth of information that will assist any/all homeowners!

Corona Tools offers heavy-duty, durable tools at a reasonable price! For over 80 years they've been in tool making business, building tools that will last you a lifetime. I've had my hedge shears from them for over 10 years, but my favorite tool is their orange snips, which just so happens to be the first tool they ever made. With 10 citrus trees, these snips come in HANDY when I need to pick a lot of fruit all at once! They are also great on my apple trees! Corona Tools was nice enough to send trowels for me to give away to my first 50 visitors on the garden tour- PLUS they are sending a huge basket of tools to be part of our big giveaway! A big thank you to Corona for their generosity- go tell them how much you love their tools on their Facebook page here!

TrailMix.Net is my absolute favorite store! Located in Old Sacramento, they have everything you need to help get your kid (and you!) outdoors! The lovely folks at Trailmix.net have donated a copy of Sharon Lovejoy's book, "Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots" for our giveaway! I adore Sharon's books, but this one is my favorite for any parent wanting help with gardening with their children. In addition to Trailmix.net's recent newsletter, we'll have copies of their famous Old Sacramento Scavenger Hunt for you to do with your children or grandchildren. Check out their website, and "like" them on Facebook!

Authentic Haven Brand's Natural Brew Tea- Moo Poo Tea for your plants! Annie Haven has sent some for us to include in our giveaway- so you might want to get to my place early! For more information on this natural soil conditioner, visit their website or call 949-248-1249. And go "like"them on Facebook!

Costa Farms is one of the premier indoor and bedding plant companies in the US. A few years ago they launched O2forYou, a program to help clean the air in your homes and businesses by offering plants that can improve the air quality in your space that can be tainted by carpets, plastics, and paint. They also just launched GrowingStyle, a premier content destination for indoor plant enthusiast's (also available for your iPhone, iPad, and Android)! They are also on Facebook! And, did I mention I have like 200 plants to give away from them? That's right! We have a bunch of O2forYou plants to give away!

Talini's Nursery: 5601 Folsom Boulevard, Sacramento CA 95819. Phone: (916) 451-8150, hours M-Su 8-6. Check them out on Facebook to keep up to date on new items and sales in the nursery! Talini's will be supplying some MaxSea fertilizer packets, plus they will be helping me pimp out my garden with their fabulous selection of garden decor and plants (did I mention they carry Annie's Annuals too?) . Oh- and soon they will be carrying chicken coops!!!!!

Annies Annuals & Perennials: 740 Market Ave, Richmond CA. Phone: Nursery, (510) 215-5301, Orders, (888) 266-4370. One of my favorite nurseries, they are a quick jump off the freeway if you are stuck in Bay Area traffic, not to mention the staff there is super fab- and their selection of plants is mind-blowing! If you have a weakness for plant crack, I have a nice supply of their summer catalog for you plant fanatics to drool over, and I will have a nice stack of coupons for you to go buy plants for your fall garden (after all, Fall is the best time to plant here in Sacramento!). I swear I have tried to grow every single plant they carry, so if you want advice on what will work well here in Sacramento, please come and ask me! And did I mention they are also participating in my garden tour giveaway? Yep! They are! We'll have a few items from them in the giveaway to help you in becoming a fellow Flower Floozie!

Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, 125 Clydesdale Court, Grass Valley CA 95945, toll free (888) 784-1722. They have the most extensive supply of organic products for your garden! As much as I love their website and catalogs, I prefer a nice autumn drive to Grass Valley to see the fall colors, and get to visit the nursery and store in person. The staff there are SUPER helpful, and I highly recommend you check out their fruit tree selection. If you come on the garden tour, make sure you ask me about the multi-fruit tree's my husband bought me from there! Visit the vendor table to grab a copy of their catalog (and psssst, there may be some seeds in it for you seedy folks!)

Dripworks, 190 Sanhedrin Circle, Willits CA 95490. If you are interested in converting your sprinklers to drip to utilize the cost/water savings, please check out their website! Not only do they have really cool videos for you DIY'ers, the folks from Dripworks are just SUPER COOL. They visited my garden a couple weeks ago and I fell in love with them, it's SO much fun to meet the "faces" behind the business and I can honestly tell you that Dripworks has your best interest in mind! Go "like" them on Facebook here, and don't forget to sign up for their email list (because you MAY see a couple familiar faces in their videos, like me.....and our favorite local farmer, Farmer Fred!)

H. Potter, Distinctive Home and Garden Accents, (509) 921-1640, if you are on the garden tour, please check out the garden torches in my backyard! They are from H. Potter! If you can convince my husband to let me buy like one of everything from their website, I would greatly appreciate it (you might think I'm joking, but I'm not!). They also have some pretty awesome guest authors affiliated with their site to help you decorate your garden- like Daffodil Planter! She's awesome, I love her, you will too :)

Schreiner's Iris Gardens, 3625 Quinaby Road N.E., Salem, OR 97303, Phone: (800) 525-2367. Not exactly local, but they have an awesome selection of irises (my husband's favorite flower), and they are from Oregon (oh hey- so is my husband!). Two things in life are true, 1.) people from Oregon are cool, and 2.) Irises are some of the easiest flowers to grow, it also helps that they are down right pretty! You won't be able to see the 18 varieties I have from them blooming on the garden tour, but you CAN grab a copy of their catalog and check out the spring time bloom action that your garden may be missing!

Urban Renewal Landscaping will be participating in our giveaway by offering TWO of our lucky visitors a free irrigation consultation! I met the owner, Jason, when I got my certification as a Green Gardener, and I'm happy to say that as of a few months ago I have URL helping me with my garden!

Who else might be here? Um.... how about a couple of my favorite local bloggers! If you're interested in bee's, you might want to search for Amy from The Lamm Farm (and if you're coming from out of town, book a room at The Citizen Hotel where she works)! Also, my favorite Davis resident, Kristi, from Not So Crafty might be here too (make sure you tell her congrats on her recent wedding!)

Interested in hearing about other NorCal garden events? Check out Dirt du Jour! They dish the dirt on all garden related events in NorCal, and scour all of the blogs and websites so you don't have to! Sign up for their email list to get email updates on upcoming tours in your area!

Schreiner's Iris Gardens

I love when I find a plant or bulb resource that just blows my mind. Schreiner's Iris Gardens in Oregon is my new infatuation, and as you can tell by their packaging- they have plant lovers in mind! After we returned from a trip to Yosemite a couple weeks ago I was heavily thinking of my grandma, who we lost to Lou Gehrig's disease this past fall. This time last year my heart was hurting and I went through fall (my favorite time of the year, usually) in a deep funk. What got me out of it was my early spring bulbs: daffodils and irises brought brightness and color to an otherwise dark period. Irises lined the street of my grandparents property in Elk Grove, and those same irises have been dug up and shared many times with several family members and friends over the years.
Although I have received plenty of iris rhizomes from my grandma and my mom, I wanted to create new heirlooms for our family by introducing some new colors. Most of the irises in my family are lavendar, but there are hundreds of other options out there! Right now happens to be the optimal time for planting new iris rhizomes, so I happily placed my order the Schreiner's. They arrived today; each of the 18 bulbs in my order were cozy and snuggly in a nice amount of packaging- not shoved in a mesh bag like you would get from some mail order sites.

And if you look closely, they were each beautifully labeled! Each label included their name, what kind of iris they are, how tall they are- AND it includes a photo of the flower.

So you wanna know what I bought? Well, I won't go into details on each specific one (I got 18 of them! We'd be here all night! You can check out their website for that info). But for starters, I ordered Bumblebee Deelite (pictured above, right) to show my appreciation and love of bee's. I also ordered a couple of black irises, like "Yosemite Nights"(because we LOVE Yosemite), and I ordered "Hello Darkness" (shown above left, black) because it immediately made me sing Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence".

Hello darkness, my old friend,

I've come to talk to you again,

Because a vision softly creeping,

Left its seeds while I was sleeping,

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence.

I ordered Gnus Flash (above, left) because of my fellow local blogger at Garry's Garden Gnus, and Grateful Red on the right is just simply beautiful and I am a sucker for anything that comes in red. I can't wait to get them all in ground, and patiently await spring when they have their moment to shine!



You can check out Schreiners on Facebook, sign up for their newsletter here, and if you'd like to get some in ground now like I am, visit their online catalog and place an order (psst- they are also having a summer sale here)!

Harvesting Artichoke Seeds

Tonight we collected artichoke seeds.
The beautiful blooms that provided us with food in the spring, and became a bee's playground in the early summer are now beautiful dried flower heads.

With something so beautiful I'm ashamed to admit how I harvested the seeds. I literally took the dried flowers and bashed them against the sidewalk. Don't judge me! These suckers aren't exactly friendly! They are pokey! I bashed, and kiddo used her magical little fingers to pick up the seeds as we went. A single flower produced at least a thousand seeds. Half went into my pile, half went into hers (payment, for her efforts). I have no idea where she put them all, but I'm sure I'll find out someday. In the meantime the flower head kept sending off pieces of "snow" (well, according to my daughter). So then what did we do?

Well, SHE danced. It was like blowing dandelions in the wind without the fear of future weeds as we plucked each and every seed before it had a chance to sail across the yard. Some of the simplest things can be so magical to a kid, and I LOVED that she enjoyed it so much.

At the end we were left with a pile of seeds (and another pile worth randomly place in the yard thanks to her). We also ended up with the worlds fanciest hat that just so happens to have the look and feel of fur without the glare from PETA.Anyone need any?

Hopscotch Stepping Stones- and a DRAMM Giveaway!

This week kiddo and I came up with this fabulous idea of making stepping stones for our garden since she is constantly getting slivers on her feet from the bark that is covering the pathways in our vegetable garden. What we ended up with: the classic game of hopscotch!
The concrete pavers were $1.19 each at our local Home Depot, and the outdoor paints were about $1.50 a piece. We were able to complete this project using one bottle of each in red, blue, green, orange, yellow and black- and we used two bottles of white. Painting the squares took us two evenings, and the installation took me about 30 minutes since I just had to move bark around to get them in. We only painted the very top of the pavers in case we want to flip them over and use them for something else later on.

What we ended up with was a strong punch of color in the garden for about $25, and kiddo feels more like this garden space is hers too. We spent some time this morning not only playing hopscotch, but working on math problems too (and these are much more fun than using boring paper!). With her 5th birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and her new adventures in kindergarten, we wanted to celebrate this new chapter in her life with a colorful giveaway! The fabulous folks over at Dramm Corporation know that kids love color, and their watering cans, rubber hoses and sprinklers show it!

The winner of this giveaway will get one of their ColorStorm Premium Rubber hoses in the color that they choose. These 50 ft long hoses resist kinking, coil easily, and come with a lifetime guarantee. But lets face it, the kids will be more interested in their brilliant colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and berry!
But that's not all! They are also offering the winner one of their Sunrise Rain Wands, also in the color you choose! These light-weight wands have a nice gentle shower so you don't have to worry about your kids harming your tender plants when they help you water your garden! Check out their website for other items that can make watering easier and more fun in your garden (we love our berry colored ColorStorm Turret sprinkler!)

To enter this giveaway leave me a comment here on this entry telling me your favorite way to add color to your garden. Bonus entries for clicking "Like" on Dramm's Facebook page (and leave me a comment here telling me you did so), and posting about this giveaway on Twitter! To tweet this giveaway post "I just entered to win a Dramm ColorStorm hose and Sunrise Rain Wand from @betweenthelimes at http://tinyurl.com/42kptuv #DRAMMgiveaway" Entries will be accepted up until August 21st! Come back here on August 22nd to see if you won!

*****We have a WINNER!***** Congratulations "SueJenn"! Email me your address and the color of hose and wand that you want! For everyone else: thank you for your entry! Please look for DRAMM products at your local garden store, or they are also available online at Amazon.

Plus- visit back here next week as we are having ANOTHER giveaway (since this one was SO much fun!)