We are a small family-run business, growing high quality plants that you can count on to be healthy, vigorous and ready to plant. As landscape designers and nursery-folk, we offer a selection of tried and true garden performers, as well as many new varieties that excel for easy care, long blooming periods, year-round interest, and most of all, for versatility.

When you visit or call us, chances are you will be greeted by one or more of these friendly and conscientious folks:

• Lynn Chrysler: Propagation Specialist & Shipping & Packing Manager
• Carol Clary: Nursery Care & Seed Sowing
• Jessica Alexis Friedland: Mail-order Coordinator & Staff Photographer
• Mary Pjerrou Huckaby: Mail Order Processing & Publicity
• Zak Karkruff: Mail Order Prepping, Nursery Care & Potting
• Cathy Miller: General Office Overseer, Mail Order Processing & Marketing
• Clause: Mouse patrol

Zoë Whigham

To Old And New Friends Of Digging Dog Nursery:

Welcome and welcome back!

Marked by the changes each season etches in our gardens, as this year draws to a close we’re already anticipating what the next gardening cycle will bring. Before exploring the pages of our brand new 2012 catalog, we would like to express our heart-felt gratitude to you, our valued customer. Your overwhelming support has ensured the success of our business, and for that we are extremely thankful. We appreciate the guidance, compliments, interest and loyalty that you extend, and always look forward to your visits. Our 20th edition features nearly 100 beguiling new selections, as well as some old favorites, all with a promise to inspire your green thumb, stimulate your senses and invigorate your passion for gardening.

Amidst the perennials you’ll discover floral and foliar intrigue, including the magnificent rosy lilac wreaths on Phlomis ‘Amazone’s statuesque stems and the lacy cream-colored blooms adorning Aruncus ‘Horatio’. Brandishing assertive blades dressed in greens, blues and smoky purples, Yucca ‘Purpurea’ makes a sculptural water-wise specimen. Impatiens omeiana weaves fantastic whorls of long, slender dark green leaves embellished with silver veins and red undersides, while Kniphofia ‘Cobra’ unleashes seductive dark bronzy tapered blooms.

The ornamental grasses we’ve added premiere pattern and prismatic allure. A hard-to-find variegated delight, ‘Goldfeder’ reigns supreme among Miscanthus exhibiting vertical stripes. Hakonechloa ‘Nicolas’s artfully weeping foliage blazes a brilliant orange-red when the nights grow cold. Ushering a galvanizing boost into the landscape are the lustrous gilded blades of Luzula ‘Solar Flair’ and Festuca ‘Superba’s purple-hued flower spikes paired with slender silver-blue leaves.

If you’re looking to incorporate more shrubs, consider Carpenteria ‘Elizabeth’ or Calycanthus x ‘Venus’, both elegant beauty queens modeling exquisite, ivory-colored fragrant blooms and shapely silhouettes. Fragrant white flowers exuding an orange sweetness and green foliage splashed with alabaster and yellow distinguish Philadelphus ‘Innocence’. Offering an extraordinary visual feast, Edgeworthia ‘Akebono’ unfurls tightly clustered blooms in luscious tangerine orange shades and Clerodendrum trichotomum parades jewel-like blue fruit in star-shaped magenta calyxes.

For splendid vertical elements, Aristolochia manshuriensis with its unusual pipe-shaped flowers and the deliciously scented Jasminum x stephanense summon exotic panache. Clematis such as the bold ruby red and fuchsia-colored ‘Kilian Donahue’, the shimmering dark orchid shades of ‘Jacqueline Du Pre’ and delicately pink-hued ‘Morning Mist’ are glamorous container subjects. Captivating specimen trees with stylish snowy flowers, Chionanthus retusus and Pterostyrax hispida broadcast year-round loveliness.

In spite of extreme weather patterns, economic uncertainty or whatever else may be happening, gardeners are hardy souls who possess a deep-seated urge to keep tending and rethinking their cultivated sanctuaries, and consequently are nurtured by the untold satisfaction this brings. Perhaps that’s why we constantly want to grab a shovel and our gardening gloves, or simply pour a drink and take a stroll outside. This innate drive carries over to the very first plants we propagated at Digging Dog Nursery, some 20 years ago to the ones we are growing today; the pleasure we derive from sharing them with you remains the same. The reformed Digging Doggies, Maya and Neptune, and the clamoring kitties, Clause, Olivia and Parquette, along with the rest of us here at the nursery hope you experience the sheer delight that comes from countless hours spent digging in a garden of your own.

Owners, Deborah Whigham & Gary Ratway

Digging Dog in the News!

The nursery and surrounding gardens are featured in this eight page article: “American Dream” by Kate Frey in Gardens Illustrated, July, 2009

The cover of Martha Stewart Living, March 2006
"Paths to Greatness," by Susan Heeger, photographs by Marion Brenner, pages 139-147, Martha Stewart Living, March 2006

"15 Years of the Best Gardening Sources"
~Martha Stewart Living

"Secret Garden: At Digging Dog Nursery on the Mendocino Coast, there's much more than what first meets the eye," by Meg McConahey, June 17, 2006, Santa Rosa Press Democrat

"Digging Dog Nursery unearths unusual plants," by Miriam Owen, San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 2006
"Digging Dog Nursery, a rare jewel, with a fully conceived landscape...features a wide variety of plants from all over the world..."

"Digging Dog Nursery in Mendocino," Petaluma's BlogTown USA: Sue Wilcox, Petaluma Argus Courier, September 28, 2006
(great photos of the Digging Dog gardens; a detailed discussion of Wilcox's visit to Digging Dog, and info about Gary's garden design and Deborah's unusual selection of plants)
"If you're the sort of person who likes out of the ordinary plants, the garden path less traveled leads through this nursery."  ~Sue Wilcox

Fine Gardening Magazine's September-October 2006 issue lists Digging Dog Nursery as one of its 8 favorite destinations for plant shopping. Fine Gardening, Garden Variety, page 18, Sept.-Oct. '06.

Business policies

Guarantee

We guarantee that our stock is healthy and ready to plant.

It's our responsibility to give each order personal attention, packing the plants with the utmost care to ensure their healthy arrival.

If you are dissatisfied in any way with your order, please notify us within 7 days, and we will remedy the situation.

However, we cannot be held responsible for failure of plants once you have installed them, as too many environmental factors are involved. We cannot be held liable for any amount greater than the purchase price of the plant in question.