Among those things that need to be considered before spring actually springs is what to do with the garden and landscaping.

"I wouldn't recommend dormant spraying now," says Matt Lepow, vice president and general manager of Almaden Valley Nursery. "With fruit trees, if flower buds have already started to swell, it's too late for the dormant spray. All it takes is two to five days of warmer weather and the buds can pop. The copper (in the spray) can burn the fruit."

However, now is the perfect time for general spring cleaning, he says. And there are other ways to prepare Almaden Valley yards and gardens for spring and summer, and to make room for myriad blooming plants, trees, shrubs and vegetables arriving at the nursery in the coming weeks.

Lepow and Eric Wilder, the company's president and owner, have a knowledgeable staff on hand—they all attend training sessions twice a month—to answer gardening questions and guide customers through the thoughtfully laid-out specialized sections, such as the color section or shade, bare-root, fruit-tree, or native-plant sections in the garden center.

Jim Citta, the nursery's native-plant expert, is responsible for stocking and caring for the special section.

In Almaden Quicksilver Park, wildflowers are blooming now with more to come as the temperatures rise, says Don Rocha, natural resource program supervisor for the county parks department.

"Shooting stars are just coming out, and the hound's tongue are out now," he says. Shooting stars have a main stem standing up with a red flower resembling a shooting star coming off the stem. Hound's tongue is a purple flower named for its tongue-shaped leaves and can be found in shady woodlands.

But Rocha says wildflower hunters should look to rocky outcroppings, where areas are exposed to more sun this time of year. He says buttercups will come out soon and poppies can be expected by late February or early March.

"When evening temperatures start warming up, we'll see an explosion of flowers," Rocha says.

Not too far from the McAbee Road park entrance, and located on Almaden Expressway, the Almaden Valley Nursery has been rooted in the neighborhood since 1975. It has been providing its customers with horticultural advice and timely gardening tips and selling unique and exclusive plants alongside the tried and true.

Wilder began working full time for the family business in 1981 and took over operations in 1988. He travels the United States throughout the year and visits growers on the East Coast, searching for new plants or uncommon colors of time-tested favorites, and every year the nursery features something that other nurseries usually won't have until the following season.

"Our customers look for really unique colors," says Wilder, who tries to accommodate the requests year-round. One recent experiment he tried was blue poinsettias sprinkled with glitter last Christmas. He wasn't sure how his customers would react to the unusual look, but they sold like crazy, he says, so the Smurf-like oddities will be back again next year, most likely accompanied by a couple more new looks.

But before that time arrives, Lepow and Wilder have suggestions on how to ready gardens for the approaching seasons. Lepow advises removing all the fallen debris, dead plants and dried leaves from planting beds and lawns.

"Now is a good time for turning the soil in the garden while it's still moist," he says, adding that removing weeds is easier now before roots are firmly established. "If you want to put down a pre-emergent to prevent weeds from coming up on your lawn, now is a good time to do that. It doesn't take more than two to three weeks for weeds to grow, and you can get them in bare dirt."

Spring-blooming bulbs should have been planted by now, but Lepow says the summer-blooming bulbs such as gladiolas, dahlias, and canna lilies are all bulbs that could be planted in the coming weeks and are all in stock.

As testimony to what Wilder says was his first botanical love—roses—there are 250 varieties of bush, climbing, Old World and miniature roses, plus 75 varieties of tree roses. All in all, there are about 4,500 plants lined up along one long fence. Organized for ease in visual selection, they are separated first by color and then alphabetically by name. Newcomer roses, which are 2004 winners in the All-America Rose Selections organization, include the pastel peach and yellow Day Breaker, the Honey Perfume rose with ruffled flowers in a honey hue or apricot and a spicy fragrance, and the super-big, super-strong "classic old rose fragrance" of the Memorial Day rose.

The All-America Rose Selections organization is a nonprofit association of rose growers that tests and promotes varieties that have been judged on qualities such as disease resistance, color, fragrance and flower production. They're available now and until the end of February at the nursery's bare-root prices. Lepow says once the plants begin to bloom, they require more attention and care and the prices go up.

Another thing that has gone up at the nursery is Wilder's fondness for flowers other than roses.

"I have a passion for perennials," he says.

Boasting the latest selections and hard-to-find varieties, the nursery contracts growers to produce the newest arrivals to the West Coast. Wilder has cultivated relationships with growers on the East Coast—where gardening trends first arrive in the United States from Europe and move westward—and is often given exclusivity in first-year introductions of new varieties.

"We've developed a sense of trust with our growers," Wilder says.

Plants that do well in the California climate and soil make their debut in the Collector's Corner of the nursery. "We have some customers who go straight to that section looking for the newest varieties," Lepow says.

On the way to that section, it's hard to pass up stopping for a peek or a sniff in the Cathedral of Shade, where more than 120 varieties of day lilies reside. They come in a rainbow of colors, ranging from the soft and subtle pale lavender and pink, such as the Rocking Cradle, or the pale yellow-cream in Vanilla Fluff, to the eye-popping orange in Rocket City or the delicious deep grape in the Chartwell variety.

"We have a lot of day lilies not found anywhere else on the West Coast," Wilder says, adding that the nursery sells more than 5,000 day lilies each year.

Some of the day lilies, which are native to the Mediterranean, central Europe and Japan, and are also contract-grown exclusively for Wilder and Lepow, haven't quite arrived yet.

"The day lilies won't come in for quite a while," Lepow says. "We're probably looking at April or May before the exclusive varieties are available."

In the meantime, people are now planting transitional plants such as deciduous magnolias, lilac, forsythia, and quince, he says.

For care and feeding of those transitionals, and any other plant, the nursery carries a full line of fertilizers, pesticides, soil, and soil amendments, all in environmentally friendly organic versions and in the chemical product line.

"Anywhere we can solve something organically, we will," Wilder says. "It's the responsible thing to do."

Rows of free care guides for everything from roses to deer-proof plants are available in the gift shop, which was added seven or eight years ago, Lepow said. The Garden Room of the Cottage Shop sells decorative indoor pots, wind chimes, picture frames, bird feeders, hummingbird feeders, silk-flower arrangements, and a variety of hostess gifts.

Outdoor pots large and small come in Malaysian or Vietnamese styles, and a selection of truly Tuscan terra cotta dots the patio niche. "Tuscan potters put in more detail," Wilder says of the Italian clay pots.

Just a stone's throw from the patio furniture are the garden center's 1,000 fruit trees, in enough flavors—100 varieties—to satisfy any palate. There are the ordinary—apple, plum, peach, nectarine, almond, apricot, and more—and the extraordinary, which includes a variety of multiple grafts, such as plum and peach on one tree and plum and apricot on another. There is a tree called a fruit cocktail that produces peaches, apricots, plums and nectarines all on one tree for handy pickings.

Keeping up with outdoor-decorating trends, the garden center's water features are splashed about in its displays so customers can see and hear how the water falls and get inspiration for their own landscaping designs. The nursery also carries pond liners and the plants that can live in them, such as water lilies and grasses.

Wilder likes to keep up with trends and says he upgrades and changes to something new each year. This year the garden center is paying attention to the layout and look of the displays and the flow of the aisles to make it easier for customers to navigate the garden center.

Paying attention to details and customer needs is evident in Wilder's philosophy and business model. The nursery's website not only shows color pictures of almost every day lily the nursery sells, as well as roses, fruit trees, perennials, shrubs, grapes and berries, but it also features timely tips for gardeners, information about insect and pest control and other gardening advice.

"I like to give our customers tools they can use. I feel like we should be a resource for them. I get personal satisfaction in seeing ideas do well," Wilder says.

Almaden Valley Nursery is located at 15800 Almaden Expressway, 408.997.1234, and its website is http://www.almadenvalleynursery.com.

By Anne Ward Ernst

Sowing the seeds of their knowledge each month, a group of women meet to harvest personal experiences and exchange the fruits of their labor by way of tips and advice.

The Almaden Valley Garden Club was formed in 1968 and has always limited its membership to about 30 members, and two charter members remain active in the club today, having seen several members pass on in life or onto new locales.

There are about 25 members in the club now, says club President Ellie McLaughlin, and most of them are Almaden Valley residents.

McLaughlin, who says she is a "relative newcomer," has been a member for eight years. She says the club has planted trees in honor of those members who have died.

The group saves its funds to purchase those trees and have them planted in parks such as Almaden Lake Park on Almaden Expressway or Parma Park on Camden Avenue. It's a practice that fits in well with the club's mission to contribute plants and materials to local parks.

"Last year we gave money to the Guadalupe Gardens project," McLaughlin says, adding that the club is saving its money to help with the landscaping of the grounds when the Almaden Branch Library on Camden is rebuilt.

They meet in members' homes on the third Monday of every month to exchange ideas or consult one another for best-practice gardening tips.

"We are not a group that goes and plants an area. It's more of an information-type thing for the people who belong," says Colleen DeVoss, one of the two remaining charter members.

In addition to picking each other's brains for ideas, they invite guest speakers to attend a meeting and give a talk or demonstration.

"Kren Rasmussen of Bloomster's is always very generous in providing programs for us. He gives us demonstrations, and members are able to buy the arrangements," McLaughlin says. Rasmussen will be presenting to the club again in March.

Often, McLaughlin says the club will invite master gardeners, who have completed hundreds of hours of study and training through the University of California, to speak about a gardening topic of interest to the group.

February's topic, at the meeting on Feb. 16, was about repotting and caring for orchids.

"Generally we try to have a program that's just a little different each month, depending on what members are interested in. We try to make them educational," says club member Glenda Jones.

Two or three times a year the club's members go on a field trip, visiting such places as Gamble Garden in Palo Alto or the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden. Mostly though, the group focuses on garden practices and materials and landscaping ideas.

"We do it to entertain ourselves and learn things and try to make a small donation of something to do with gardening in the area," Jones says.

Those interested in joining the club should contact the membership chairwoman, Colleen DeVoss, at 408.268.2799.

By Anne Ward Ernst

Buttered toast, coffee and fried eggs go nicely together on any given morning, but these fried eggs are more pleasing to the eye than to the palate. In a corner of the Almaden Valley Nursery, native-plant enthusiast and perennial-plant buyer for the nursery Jim Citta stocks his favorite fried eggs but doesn't recommend eating them.

"The matilija poppy is also called a fried-egg plant because, well, it looks like a fried egg," Citta says. "It's about six inches wide, white, with a bright yellow center."

The "fried-egg" plants are one of the native plants sold in the Collector's Corner, where specialty and native plants are displayed. Citta would love to see more native plants in the yards of Almaden Valley. Advantages to filling gardens with native species are many, he says.

"They are very easy to grow; after all, they are native and they are well-adapted to the environment. Many are low-water users or completely drought tolerant," Citta says. "They take very little care as far as pruning or shaping."

Another favorite found at the nursery is emerald carpet manzanita, a dense ground cover that is carefree once established. White bell-shaped flowers hang from the stem and may have a little pink on them, depending on the variety.

Flowers on native plants are typically small, which may not appeal to some people, but attract birds, butterflies and beneficial insects.

"Many natives are attractive. They may not be as spectacular as the exotics, but they still have a lot of color. They enhance the environment and bring it back to where it was before the Gold Rush," he says. "Planting natives is good for the environment."

About 95 percent of Citta's backyard sports native plants, including fuchsia-flowering gooseberry, which may also be found in Almaden Quicksilver Park, he says.

"It's just beginning to flower now. It grows in morning sun, afternoon shade, and it's called that because they look like tiny fuchsias. The flowers are purple or red or white, and hang down like fuchsias do."

Common names of natives often are coined because of the plants' similarities to something common in life—like coffee.

"The California coffee berry is named that way for a reason also. It has berries that come out red and turn black, and they really do taste like coffee," Citta says.