California Nursery Garden Club

From the 1950 catalog, the AARS winner, the 'Mission Bell'. Roses come and go and this one is only available from one grower. Thank you Daniel, for breathing life into this catalog photo with a current photo! https://archive.org/details/cafrcnc_000030/page/2/mode/2up

'Talisman' is a Pernetiana rose. It might have been planted in the display gardens 87 years ago this summer. So nice to see a rose that was introduced in 1929, sold by the nursery in 1934, and is still around to be admired. Compare to the rose in the 1934 catalog. Thank you, Daniel, for posting this photo.

Part 2, not something you see every day....

Part 1 of the John Deere grader heading out

Two Teas Today @ California Nursery Garden Club

We see lots of photos of families and friends taken at the park. Here's a new visitor to the park in the Forest of Boxed Trees. Be sure to visit the park soon to take your pictures. In December the main portion will be closed for infrastructure updates. The historic office garden area will continue to be open for visitors.

Another mystery auto photo, taken at the front entrance of the nursery. Can anyone ID the make and model of these two cars? The location is where the park entrance is today. You can see the railroad crossing and the hills beyond. There were rose hedges planted along the Canary Island date palms historically, just as the 'Ragged Robins' are today lining the nursery's Display gardens at the entrance. The license plate is 754, so once we know what year this might be we can loo...k it up in the California Register of Motor Vehicles. Then we can see who came to visit the nursery and from where! Niles Boulevard did not go through to the town at this point. Eventually the first salesyard was built at the end of the county road. So this was before 1922 or so.

Posing crow on the Adobe. . #nilesfremont #californianurseryhistoricalpark @ California Nursery Garden Club

The ‘Niles Cochet’ originated in the growing grounds of the California Nursery. It was a sport of the ‘Maman Cochet’ and was introduced in 1906 as ‘Red Maman Cochet.’ One of the many things that makes Niles special...and made the nursery famous (if you hang around the right people). The other lighter tea, also beautiful, is un-named. These were growing in the pathway and were headed for the dumpster, but were rescued to shine for a moment as a #dumpsterbouquet. For those of you who wonder what a sport is, it is a mutation. So a single bud or branch on a white flowered rose came out red and someone liked the new color enough to propagate vegetatively. #i3dsteroid @ California Nursery Garden Club #nilesfremont #californianurserygardenclub #nilescochetrose

Check out the bumble bee and the orb-weaver spider next to it. The zig zag in the web is called the stabilimentum. Ready for Halloween?

Quince a party all year long. The 1946 catalog describes the three quince bushes in the garden: Candida, Stanford Red, and Coral Sea. Quince jelly is made with quince, sugar, and water. It has enough pectin to thicken naturally and it turns a beautiful shade of red.

The Teas in the garden today...

After 1939, the nursery office got a makeover that embraced the new Old Adobe theme of the nursery. Architect, Edward T. Foulkes, was known locally for the Oakland Tribune Tower and the Rustic Parthenon at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Today the brick flower beds hold the workhorse rose Coral Drift which were donated by two fans of the park. ... The building otherwise looks the same, but wouldn’t it look even better with the rustic unpeeled log entryway?

Christina at Ardenwood shows how use a cider press.

Some 1937 photos of the nursery. It is easy to orient yourself using the formal display gardens and lawn. The nursery office is the center of today’s park gardens. Notice the greenhouses behind the nursery office, where apartments are now. Lathe houses cover much of the area where LEAF is located today and the parking lot is now. Two rail lines ran through the 463 acre nursery. BART now runs where the Western Pacific ran through the center of the nursery. Beyond the WP is where Quarry Lakes park is now. That is where a million roses were grown, until the gravel was quarried. The Display gardens were planted with roses in summer. Notice that the windmill has not arrived yet!