Cistus Nursery Tough Love Sale…

I’d been back in the United States for a little over 12 hours and where was I? At Cistus Nursery of course! Last Saturday was the start of their annual Tough Love Sale.

This sale is all about clearing out plants that are not in top form, and the prices reflect that…
$1 for 4" pots
$3 for 6" pots and gallon plants
$6 for 2 gallon plants
$10 for 5 gallon plants

Even though I wasn't able to make it for their 10 am opening I couldn't stay away on the first day! Not that I really needed to buy more plants (after all I took a load of yet-to-be-planted babies over to one of my plant lust partners for baby setting (watering) while we were gone on vacation), but I couldn't resist the possibility of discovering some fabulous (cheap!) treasure which I could nurse back to health.

Cordylines…

Phormium…

I managed to resist both of those. It was harder to resist these sad Restios (?), if I had a big greenhouse I would have tried to nurse the one on the right back to health.

Ditto for this Washingtonia filifera…

These perfect little leaves caught my eye and when I went to pick it up and look closer I was stabbed by dozens of thorns along the branches…danger!

Firmiana simplex, or Chinese Parasol Tree. The only thing that stopped me from taking this home was the word "tree" (no room)…

I had this one in my wagon for awhile; I liked the leaves and loved the sturdy little trunk. In the end it went back as I wasn’t quite sure what it was (many of the plants at this sale are not labeled) and didn’t want to get too carried away.

Here’s my haul…

And at home after I’d cleaned them up a bit…

That plant with the tiny leaves and dangerous thorns is Acacia caven…

This one also was without a label; it reminded me of a Nothopanax/Metapanax delavayi but yet when I compared it to mine at home the leaves look way too small.

Anyone have any ideas?

For just $1 I thought I would take a chance on this marginally hardy here Dudleya collomae.

My big score… Lupinus arboreus. I thought it was the same Lupine as the one I fell in love with awhile back at another nursery (in a planted display container, they didn’t have any for sale) but it turns out that was a Lupinus albifrons. Oh well, close enough…love those leaves!

Halimium halimifolium f. maculatum…my last Halimium up and died, or at least it looked dead so it went bye-bye. For $1 I thought I’d try another, plus this one has better flowers!

And last but not least…I couldn’t pass up this unlabeled Agave…

If you are in the area and bummed that you missed the sale don’t be! It runs through November and they're constantly adding new things, in fact in prior years I’ve found some of the best stuff weeks after the sale opened!