Anyone who likes azaleas can be trusted, she said.

Possibly because it cuts through no major business districts, Parthenia Street is one of the San Fernando Valley’s least distinctive boulevards. Yet, for browsers, it offers some unexpected pleasures, such as that strip of half a dozen unconscionably large estates, encircled by walls like French chateaux.

My favorite discovery on Parthenia is too subtle to cause much notice from the street, except during these winter months when azaleas are in bloom.

I have been to Mary Surina’s Camellia Gardens several times and still don’t know its address. I find it each time the way I did the first, by driving west from the San Diego Freeway until I see the old, rusted sign that says, “Camellias, Azaleas.”

Behind the sign are several dozen large azaleas in wooden nursery containers and, behind those, two dwellings built in the style of Far Western ranch houses.

Visitors can pull in over a dirt driveway and park next to the bodies of a couple of cars that appear to be kept around for salvage.

On my first visit, I walked up to the main house and knocked. A young man who was playing a guitar opened the door.

When I asked about azaleas, he stepped out and led me down a path beside an untended swimming pool. Behind the second house, the path opened up into what appeared to be a small area under a cover of sagging wooden lattices and gardener’s mesh.

The young man and I stooped down to walk along a dirt aisle running between thousands of one-gallon and two-gallon plants.

With each few steps, the aisle stretched out farther in front of us until it finally became apparent that there were probably tens of thousands of potted azaleas and, eventually, I would have to guess, even a hundred thousand or more.

When we reached a point where the lattice was tall enough to stand up under, the young man stopped and asked me what I wanted.

I told him a story about the azalea my wife bought at K-Mart that almost died of neglect until I rescued it by putting it in a pot and tending to it. Just when it was coming back, the dogs pulled it out of the pot and ate it. I told him I missed it and needed a replacement.

Though all that was true, I thought it sounded stupid even as I told it, calculated only to explain why I had walked into an azalea farm on a weekday with my business suit on. The young man took it seriously, however, and helped me pick out several one-gallon azaleas to ease my pain.

He said they were $1.50 apiece.

Just then I heard a whirring sound coming from behind, and then, a woman’s voice.

It was Mary Surina, the youth’s grandmother, driving up on her electric cart. The cart had a large wooden platform with her seat at the rear. The steering handle was broken and she used a vice grip on the nub.

She asked if I was a landscaper. I said I wasn’t.

Then she told me I would have to pay $3 apiece.

That seemed fair enough. I wrote out a check and offered identification.

She brushed it aside. Anyone who likes azaleas can be trusted, she said.

That was in the fall. As I left, Mary asked me to come back after the holidays when the azaleas would be in bloom.

Many people come by on on weekends and on their lunch breaks just to look at the flowers, she said.

When I arrived last Sunday and led myself into the nursery, Mary, wearing an old sweater and curlers, was buzzing up and down the aisles in her cart, followed by a stout man in rubber boots and a T-shirt.

“This is Francisco,” she said. “He’s been with us for eight years.”

She said Francisco and his family live in the second house.

Francisco does the heavy work.

“I don’t lift anymore,” Mary said. “I just ride the cart back and forth and tell them what to do.”

Mary, never leaving her cart, took a break for few minutes to chat about her business.

She’s not the only azalea grower in the Valley, she said. But the others raise the plants for florists and use heavy fertilizing to force the buds.

“We raise them naturally,” she said.

Her customers are mostly landscapers and large garden shops, she said.

Although she has planted and raised each plant herself, Mary doesn’t really know how many azaleas she has. It’s about 300,000, she guessed.

“My husband started raising camellias 40 years ago,” she said. “We moved here 28 years ago.”

They bought 2 1/2 acres and held onto it despite intense economic pressure to partition and develop a parcel that size.

Mary started raising azaleas after they moved in. She never stopped, even after her husband died.

“I love it,” she said.

Azaleas are easy to love. They are like tiny hedges that bloom in large showy clusters of purple, red, salmon and white. And they bloom in winter.

“They’re what give you your winter color,” Mary said. “Even when they’re not in bloom they’re elegant. There’s a certain dignity about them.”

Mary has about 200 varieties, some of which she created herself.

“That’s my own invention,” she said, pointing one out. “That’s the one I named after my husband. Frederick Surina. “

I walked around the grounds to see the fresh blooms.

As I returned, I found Mary sitting pensively on her cart, staring out over a spread of small plants.

“This is a happy place,” she said when I broke her reverie.