In the Garden with Pat Rubin

Bee garden writer Pat Rubin writes about everything that grows, from flowers and trees to vegetables and lawns. Pat volunteered for several years as a Placer County Master Gardener and has written about gardening for many national and regional publications. In addition to gardening, she spends time raising and showing miniature horses and miniature donkeys.

In the Garden will include news, events, advice and other gardening tidbits. Pat will also answer reader questions.

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October 18, 2007

New nursery in Natomas

Jets taking off from Sacramento International Airport fly right over Clancy’s Garden. If the passengers inside the jets look down as the planes climb, they’d see three acres of plants and garden vignettes below them where just a few months ago the landscape was bare fields.

Jackie Bird, along with her husband Jim, changed all that. The former mortgage banker walked away from the finance industry to pursue her dream of opening a nursery. The couple rented 40 acres of flat, bare fields, and turned about 10 acres into the nursery.

The retail/wholesale plant area covers about three acres, and in addition to hundreds of containers of plants -- everything from mums to camellias to palm trees to flax to carnations to kangaroo paws -- Bird has created vignettes reflecting various gardening styles. There’s a Zen garden, a cottage garden, a contemporary garden and more dotted throughout the nursery. She has two horticulturists on staff to answer even the most perplexing gardening questions.

The impetus to open the nursery, named for Jackie Bird’s childhood nickname, came when the couple was looking for a concrete bench featured in Architectural Digest. “No one in Sacramento carried it,” Jackie Bird remembers. After extensive research, they found the bench. It now sits in the nursery.

“(Clancy’s) is the first nursery opened in Natomas, and I think the first new nursery opened in the Sacramento area in 20 years,” Jackie Bird says. Bird hopes to create an area for educational seminars and demonstrations. She also hopes garden clubs will be able to hold meetings at the nursery.

Clancy’s Garden is open seven days a week, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Take the Sacramento International Airport exit, turn away from the airport, then right on the frontage road.

It’s easy to spot from the freeway: Look for the colorful streamers and a geyser-like spire of water shooting up out of the pond. For questions, call the nursery at (916) 275-9445.

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