True Dirt

Annie's catalog: better than Martha?

Annie's Annuals is a gardening institution here in the East (San Francisco) Bay. Started by Annie Hayes as an enthusiastic venture in propagating unusual and native plants (at first all annuals) from seed and selling the seedlings at local nurseries and garden centers, it has mushroomed into a large retail nursery, website selling plants and seeds, and now a mail order catalog.

The colorful cover of Annie's first ever paper catalog landed in my mailbox a few days ago. Already a fan of Annie's retail plant business, and a frequent browser of her comprehensive website, I wondered what an old-fashioned mail catalog could offer that her other services didn't. The answer didn't come to me immediately. I thumbed through the 48-page collection of fabulous photographs and extended descriptions of this highly idiosyncratic selection of annual and perennial plants for sale by mail. Annie has a great eye and it's reflected in the photos of individual plants and plant groupings that often show foliage and plant forms as well as blooms.

But it didn't hit me what was really the attraction of such a catalog until I read a piece by Amy Stewart at her garden blog, Dirt about the state of garden magazines - and the comments of readers generally dissatisfied with their offerings. It occurred to me that what the garden mags lack a good catalog has in spades--lots of photos of plants (as opposed to garden stage sets), plant information and descriptions (some less useful than fanciful), and a chance to actually possess the dream with a simple order form.

I have from time to time been a subscriber to Sunset, Horticulture, and the recently deceased The Gardener (an offshoot from White Flower Farm), and occasionally bought Fine Gardening and Martha Stewart Living (the garden issues) off the rack. But I have found true garden reading satisfaction only with the local and specialized quarterlies like Pacific Horticulture and Fremontia (from the California Native Plant Society). Horticulture came closest to surviving the magazine layoffs but I finally had to admit that too many of the articles were about four-season gardening and thus irrelevant to me, and the garden writing itself was weak. I wanted some actual garden literature (we're talking Vita Sackville-West and Katharine S. White here) as well as scientifically specific plant and soil information. I also wanted to see more of regular gardener's gardens from all over.

So the appeal of the catalogs was that I got to browse plants and read about plants with some good photographs of plants (not designer planting beds). And there is a difference between Annie's catalog and many others. She is highly selective, including some quite rare plants like the strange and beautiful Puya, a member of the pineapple family that is native to Chile; others are old-fashioned favorites with a twist, like heirloom "pinwheel" Marigolds that are hard to find, or species Dahlias in their native Mexican color schemes. I'm too close by to mail order, so the real attraction is the extra enticement to visit her nursery in nearby Richmond. You can buy the plants and you can see where they are grown at the two-and-a-half acre spread cooled by SF Bay breezes where a fleet of little red wagons by the entryway encourages shoppers to load up as they stroll the aisles of plant-laden tables.

So, has Annie got the goods over Martha? Checking out the Martha Stewart Living website where the March issue of the mag features Martha's 15 years of gardening "greats", I read this from the maven herself: "With a really good plan and good architecture, you can make a garden happen."

I beg to disagree. What you need is a really good place to buy plants - and someone like Annie to entice and educate you.

Posted by briggs at February 28, 2006 11:26 AM