Historical Photos: Yerba Buena Nursery, Specializing in California Native Plants and Ferns

Jimmy Rapley came one day to have lunch or talk with Gerda. I was working in the garden and tried to photograph them together but didn't want to intrude. This was the best I could do.

Eleanor Williams and Karen DeLapp at the potting table. Cold day.

Springtime from Skyline Blvd.

Great Room before Christmas.

We went to the San Francisco Garden Show one year (with great ambitions) but Gerda had a small budget so we split the booth with Judith. We put too many ferns up on our half and people tended to not see us. I can't remember if we went again.

Looking down the path.

Shep, Gerda's nursery dog. He kept the deer away every night. He would follow me during the day in the demonstration garden. This is at the bottom of the ceanothus area.

Just a foggy morning. Note how sparsely planted the garden was then. From the hill to the west of the pond, looking at the bay laurel.

Lou Bordi working on a fire hydrant support while his operators work on the subgrade for the parking lot. The construction of the parking lot was a big deal and major advance as prior to that everyone sort of parked here and there and on down the road into the nursery and down towards below the main farmhouse. The parking lot was done during the construction on the new water system.

Marilyn's last day. Eleanor Williams, Matthew (Carl) Isenberg, Marilyn Daggett, Brent Wilcox, and Shep (trying to get away.)

One felt that one had arrived when one was issued a shoe box.

Looking up at the garden from the Salvia area. The large doug fir in the foreground later fell in 1995.

On the last day before a major event after we had been working hard, Gerda surprised staff with a sit down meal in the beautiful corner of the Great Room. Brent Wilcox, Ruth, Lori Huddard, Eleanor Williams, Karen DeLapp. (the oak tree that later fell is visible - two trunks- in the window.)

From the corner window of the Great Room. There was a large oak tree that was at the corner of the house. It fell one early morning. I was up checking the water tank and ran down. It missed the corner of the house by inches so far as I could tell and landed all over the cutting flower garden and clothes line area. Very fortunate not to have been later in the day. Lou Bordi felled the remaining half and I limbed and bucked up everything. These are the stumps (there were two main trunks.)

The new (existing) water tank under construction. Lou Bordi had cut the pad and we had poured the slab and now the tank company is starting the construction.

Gerda had a day for one of the organizations. Two unknown visitors to the left Gerda, Karen DeLapp and Eleanor Williams.

All images are circa 1986-89 (unless otherwise noted.) Courtesy of Brent Wilcox.

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Yerba Buena Nursery
(650) 851-1668

19500 Skyline Blvd.
Visitors Welcome!

Woodside, CA 94062
FAX (650) 851-5565

Open Tuesday - Saturday 9 am-5 pm, CLOSED Sundays and Mondays