Our Pilgrimage to Annie's Annuals in the Bay Area

If you are a gardener, you already know about Annie's Annuals, and like me, you regularly jump for joy whenever their catalog arrives in your mailbox. If you are new to gardening, you must order a catalog from them asap. Each edition is complete eye candy and the plant descriptions are really well written. It makes for amazing bedside reading, and it will fill you dreams with so many blooms you've not yet dreamt about, but you will...I promise. 

If anything during this last trip made me want to move to California, it was this nursery, along with all of the other amazing gardens and native plants we met along the way. That day we drove in from camping along the Sonoma Coast and though we were dirty and tired, both my husband and I wandered around the nursery in some kind of a floral daze. 

Many of the plants below are special native plants in California. Reading about them really blew me away and I hope that my husband can purchase some for the vineyard in the future. 

Uncinia uncinata 'Red' or 'Rubra with Sisyrinchium.

I don't think I have ever seen Sweet Peas as sweet (Lathyrus odoratus).

Lathyrus odoratus 'Senator'.

Grindelia hirsutula.

Mimulus aurantiacus 'Point Molate'.

Lotus formossisimus 'Western Trefoil'.

Lupinus succulentus 'Rodeo Rose'.

Mimulus pictus 'Calico Monkey Flower'.

Thistle Sage, Salvia carduacea.

Butterfly Mariposa Lily, Calochortus venustus.

Armeria.

Phacelia viscida.

Antirrhinum multiflorum 'Rose Snapdragon'.

Lathyrus vestitus.

Tufted California Poppy, Eschscholzia caespitosa.

I love the blue of this Anchusa azurea 'Alkanet'. 

It is safe to say that shopping that day at Annie's Annuals was like visiting plant nerd paradise. Oh how I love that I can't take plants into California, but I sure can bring them out of The Golden State!