Soddenly, It’s Spring

Normally, Armstrong Garden Centers Inc. workers are planting petunias in Southern California’s desert resorts and golf clubs in March, splashing the landscape with shades of red, blue, purple and plum.

Not this year.

Rain pummels petunias, said Michael Kunce, chief executive of the Glendora-based company, which operates 37 garden centers and three nurseries, all in California. So, customers figure, why bother?

“We will dump approximately 90,000 flats of petunias that were scheduled to go into those desert resorts,” Kunce said last week. “We throw them in the trash can.”

Springtime, it seems, has sprung a leak.

Nurseries and garden centers have lost sales as would-be gardeners were holed up on rainy weekends instead of gathering armloads of pansies, impatiens, snapdragons and geraniums.

“You kind of wonder where the people went,” said Jim Nuccio, co-owner of 70-year-old Nuccio’s Nurseries Inc. in Altadena, which sells about 500 varieties of azaleas and 600 kinds of camellias. “It’s definitely a tough year.”

While hearty wildflowers are having a field day, many of their coddled cousins -- which often are coaxed to life in a greenhouse -- are taking a beating. Some hesitate even to poke their heads out.

“When it’s colder and wetter, plants don’t flower as quickly, so it’s sort of like spring, for us, is delayed,” said Lisa Featherstone, spokeswoman for Rogers Gardens in Corona del Mar, where sales are down 30% compared with the same time last year and where some workers have been laid off.

Native plants such as the California lilac are none too pleased at the moment. And a fungus called downy mildew has seized the roses.

“That’s from just constantly being wet,” said Rogers Gardens nursery manager Ron Vanderhoff. “We just get rid of them.”

Many roses still are available, but because of mildew Rogers Gardens hasn’t been able to get its hands on a couple of traditional big sellers, including the Ronald Reagan and Diana, Princess of Wales varieties.

Charles Blackburn, 69, was at Rogers Gardens when it opened Friday under blue skies, ready to collect the Burpee Delicious tomato plants that he nurtures every year, a variety so beefy that one will make three salads and a couple of sandwiches.

“I didn’t want to plant them in the rain because they get spoiled,” the Orange resident said. “They get soaked and they lie over and droop.”

Edith Nold can relate. The 66-year-old retiree planted shrub roses only to watch them drown. Neither did she have much luck with the sweet-pea seeds that she planted in October.

“It’s so wet that it’s hard to get out and work in the soil,” the Irvine resident said.

It’s a maddening situation for businesses that make up the state’s $13.8-billion garden and floral production industry. California is the leading nursery production state, with Florida a distant second, said Elaine Thompson, president of the California Assn. of Nurseries and Garden Centers, a trade group with more than 1,300 members. And, unlike other states, California often has an early spring, sometimes even in January.

“There’s no gardening -- it’s March. It’s Easter this weekend,” she said Friday. “Cash flow for the whole year comes from this season.”

“If it keeps raining,” she added, “we are in trouble.”

Baron Bros. Nursery in Camarillo has had more than its share already.

When the Santa Clara River overflowed near the company’s Fillmore ranch this year, 2- and 3-foot boxes holding orange and avocado trees were blanketed with silt, a mess that’s been difficult to clean up, co-owner Richard Baron said.

“We start getting a little dry weather where we can start getting things cleared up, and we get more rain,” Baron said. “It’s horrible.”

“We were planting between storms,” he added. “A lot of plants aren’t growing yet because of so much rain.

“We’re just way behind in production.”

Plants at Palomar Mesa Growers are flowering slowly, said Craig Childs, who owns the San Diego company. But garden centers want everything that blooms, so his sales are only “slightly off.”

“We’re selling everything that we can produce,” he said. “It’s March and if you’re not selling it now you’re not selling it.”

That’s what worries Nuccio, who’s hoping gardeners get in gear quickly because his azaleas and camellias bloomed earlier than usual. Nuccio’s sales were down about 50% in January and close to 40% in February.

Still, people who hang out with flowers tend to be optimists, and they’re quick to point out the bright side.

“Sales are off by 80% right now, but it’ll come around, I’m sure,” said John Schoustra, owner of Greenwood Daylily Gardens in Somis, who sells mostly to landscape professionals who have put their commercial projects on hold because of the soggy landscape. “It’s just a cash-flow issue for a lot of the nurseries,” he said.

Besides, Schoustra noted, his day lilies and irises practically sing in the rain.

“They loved it,” he said. “Rainwater is so much better for the plants than well water or irrigation water.”