Nevada County Native Plants

05/20/2026

I'll be participating in the second annual nursery crawl, stay tuned for details but here's the dates and times.

Planning stages underway for the 2 nd annual Nevada County Nursery Crawl! 😆
This self-directed crawl will be on Friday, June 19th and Saturday, June 20th. Yay! Gives you two days to visit as many nurseries as you want. 🚙 Their will be 13 or more nurseries to visit ( stay tuned on that list)
INSTRUCTIONS: A list will be posted by end of May. You can download from here OR pick up at a participating Nursery. You will take that list to each Nursery you wish to visit, and they will stamp it as a verification that you visited that Nursery. You need to visit a minimum of six nurseries, but you can visit as many as you would like. The last nursery you choose to visit, you will submit your list to be entered into a drawing at that nursery. You could possibly win a plant, garden decoration or gift certificate 🥳
Some of the nurseries will be offering special deals, discounts, giveaways, etc. Some will have informational booths, drinks or snacks, and food trucks. We will try to advise in advance of what they are offering on this site OR they will advertise on their page.
Please DM if any questions or you can text 916-344-1980 between 8 am-8 pm.

05/12/2026

It's that time of the season, spring plants in snowmelt upper coniferous, montane zones come out of rest, including the famous Sarcodes sanguinea, Snowplant. This unique member of the Manzanita family (Ericaceae) lives in semi shady acidic forest floors. Sarcodes does not photosynthesize producing chlorophyll on its own. Instead of photosynthesizing it has dependency on intact mycorrhizal networks where it takes nutrients from over story trees through the mycorrhiza . Think of the habitat as a restaurant , the tree is the kitchen, and the mycorrhiza are the waiter, to the customer Sarcodes. More of a soup kitchen scenario. This is a specific niche of being parasitic called mycoheterotrophy. Sarcodes are far from a rare sight but does not dilute the significance of seeing these unique plants.

02/24/2026

When my heart first opened up to realizing how important native plants are, there was these buzz topics to sell people on them such as, "what native plants can do for us". Their adaptability for drought, less water use, to save us money, the list goes on. I personally don't think it's a stretch to ask plants what we can do for them. They already carry the burden of our confusion, recreation, destruction in the name of progress, and on top of that, they transmute solar radiation into oxygen for us to do all these various adjectives. The simple act of putting a native plant back into the soil is such a huge intentional or passive motion of giving back to the land, and heals voids we've created. No matter how much wild land and native plants there are still, development, disturbance, and removal of native plants is not slowing down. The hugest majority of plants being placed back into the Earth are introduced foreign plants. Why are we obsessed with converting and dictating the land. I think we all can identify from personal experience that when you have a family or a team, and one of those members gets removed, the team or family has to physically, mentally, emotionally compensate. We know how this feels, we know how it ripples the pond to say the least. This is a reality for vegetation alliances. It takes every micro attribute to support the macro system. Each native plant is a micro act of reciprocity in respect and honor of the macro picture of the land.

12/08/2025

Just a subtle reminder for those who havent seen precipitation in the past 2-3 weeks. If you have planted native plants recently to benefit from the establishment season, giving your plants, a long slow drink to make up for the precipitation deficit is far from a bad idea.

11/03/2025

I'm very humbled and proud to be interviewed by and be included in this quarters Flora magazine with other incredible growers devoted to stewardship and accountability to the land. We can always do better, but native plants are an incredible realistic path in land healing and reciprocation.
Raises glass to plant whisperers near and far🥂

09/16/2025

Hi friends wanted to post a couple topics, of my open house and availability.
-The past year indirectly and directly I've heard that it's difficult to come across Sulphur Buckwheat, Eriogonum umbellatum. I even overheard one person searching for five plus years. If you ever find yourself in or around that conversation please tell those involved in that conversation, "you know a guy". The one predictable attribute of my nursery is I devotedly grow this annually in my nursery from seed, locally collected. Stop your search, give me a visit. I'm good for it, "while supplies last". Another predictable thing of my nursery is there's always at least a handful of very uncommon plants in my nursery for you folks who collect, or enjoy digging deep in native plant landscaping. Always a great idea to thumb through my availability to discover those unique additions and read up on. Some examples I'm very proud of this year are Ageratina occidentalis, and a sub shrub natural variety of ocean spray, Holodiscus discolor var. microphyllus. My availability is updated in my profile bubbles, I'll put that in my story. Thank you so much for support and encouragement of my efforts.

06/22/2025

It's come to my attention I've never introduced myself properly. Greetings kin, my name is Justin Maciulis; a late bloomer in many aspects riding on the tails of others as most of my immediate surroundings and realities to say the least were incompatible. During the year I turned 21, 1995, I moved from Las Vegas Nevada, while doing West Coast Grateful Dead tours. Never thought California would be the place I'd fall in love with, but we broke down in Nevada County and embraced by the kind folk of Nevada City. Huge reason of that allure , was the land.I ran through many variations of jobs that were short lived, and through the affinity of Cannabis cultivation I enrolled myself in college for horticulture with no road map. Imagine that, the old school propaganda of cannabis being a gateway had some relevance 🤣. I just wanted to learn about plants. My teachers are amazing mentors and as I ran through the units I really found a lot of joy in propagation, and plant ID. The more wild native stuff I learned, my devotion grew stronger. As I was trying to squeeze one more unit to cross my degree completion I was offered to do an independent study that was propagating, cultivating, and advocating native plants. The craft fell so easily into my hands I decided that was what I wanted to do. At first I was all over the place propagating plants from all over the state. Then at the young age of 33 I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had to abandon a newly licensed native plant nursery. Before and after my cure, I was given many amazing opportunities in conservation and botany and was a tech assistant for PhD, Robert Holland (Dr Bob) One day during a grazing monitoring on the other half of Yosemite's renown "Half Dome", during temps 100+ in a treeless, alluvial fan filthy with vernal pools we saw a handful of native plants, flowering. Supporting numbers of pollinators. Most likely a undescribed variety of Eriogonum nudum. That was the moment I realized, native plants matter, but these plants, where they stand, matter the most. That was the day I vowed to devote, and focus my practice on hyper local native plants. More in comments.

06/19/2025

Every time I hold a Salvia sonomensis, "creeping sage" rooted cutting I reflect to 20+ years of native plants propagation. It's so nostalgic and I can't help but give her gratitude to the encouragement this plant has given me, to "fool around and fall in love" with native plants. I've had some incredible mentors from many aspects of native plants, but the greatest mentors are the plants themselves and the conversations and encounters I have with them. Since I fooled around, and fell in love, I haven't looked back, and continue to build more relationships with these plants and hope I can assist more connection and unity to these plants with other people. I believe to say the least.

06/13/2025

Event description from our impressive organizer New Life Nursery

Hey Crawlers! 👩‍🌾 👨🏽‍🌾Tomorrow is the big day, 9 am to 4 pm. If you haven’t picked up your card yet, here is one to print out OR you can pick one up at the first nursery you visit 👍.
*Remember, you must visit and have your card stamped at a minimum of six nurseries in order to be entered into drawing at last nursery you visit ( so save the best for last 🤣)
But you can certainly visit all 15 nurseries in one day!! Great giveaways, special sales, food and drink… going to be a fun day!!
And thank you for supporting your local family owned nurseries!!! 💚

04/18/2025

So excited to participate, thank you New Life Nursery for organizing this event.