SLO County native plant nursery closed to public due to COVID. It’s finally reopening
When Bert Wilson, the founder of Las Pilitas Nursery in Santa Margarita, died suddenly in the spring of 2014, his family had no time to grieve.
“The next day I was pulling orders,” said his daughter, Penny Nyunt, who took over day-to-day business operations with her brother, Ian Wilson. “We were still not even sure what we were doing, but we had orders going out the next week.”
One of California’s first nurseries to specialize in native plants, Las Pilitas Nursery has weathered challenges including wildfires, heat waves, drought and flash flooding over the decades.
“Every single Friday or Saturday, we were open,” Nyunt said, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced the business to close its doors to the public. “For us to be closed for three years is completely insane.”
In October, the nursery will reopen to in-person shopping for the first time since March 2020.
Nyunt is looking forward to sharing her knowledge about native species with customers firsthand.
“There’s more plant species in California than in the whole rest of the United States together,” Nyunt said. “We have so much biodiversity here. ... We’re putting back what is there.”
Cal Poly alumni started nursery in 1970s
When Bert and Celeste Wilson started Las Pilitas Nursery as Cal Poly students in the 1970s, their daughter said, few people were interested in using native plants in their landscaping.
“People would come (to the nursery) and be like, ‘Why are you growing these weeds?’ ” Nyunt recalled. “It (seemed) to be just completely off everybody’s radar.”
Bert Wilson got the idea for a nursery specializing in California native plans while working as a landscaper and studying chemistry at Cal Poly.
Wilson wanted to build gardens for his clients featuring indigenous flora but soon realized there was nowhere nearby to buy them.
“He was really ahead of his time,” his daughter said. “People thought he was a little nuts.”
Sensing an opportunity, Bert and Celeste Wilson started a small native plant nursery in their San Luis Obispo backyard in 1974.
About four years later, the couple purchased about nine acres on Las Pilitas Road in Santa Margarita, where the nursery and family farm remains today.
SLO County nursery teaches gardeners about California native plants
Education has always been a huge component of the Wilson family’s mission, Nyunt said, noting that her parents shared a passion for science.
Bert Wilson graduated from Cal Poly in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, while his wife Celeste earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at the San Luis Obispo university in 1978 and received a master’s degree in biological science there in 1999.
“(My father) wanted to make sure people understood how California works and that you could build a system in your garden,” Nyunt said.
In the 1990s, Bert Wilson wanted to write a book about California native plants but couldn’t find an interested publisher. Instead, he published the information on Las Pilitas Nursery’s website.
The website quickly grew into an expansive taxonomy of California flora featuring thousands of pages of photos.
On the site, Wilson taught gardeners how to support biodiversity and mimic naturally occurring ecosystems throughout the state. He also developed a database of plant communities that lists native plants in every zip code in California.
“We really want people to be able to come from any place in California and get the species from their area, so that we’re putting back what is there,” Nyunt explained.
By using native plants, gardeners can save money on maintenance, use less water, avoid herbicides entirely and support wildlife, Nyunt said, noting that some animal species rely on particular plants.
For example, monarch butterflies eat nectar from certain species of milkweeds.
While planting California milkweed and other native plants that monarchs use in gardens can help the species continue, the Las Pilitas website said, planting non-native milkweed species, such as the tropical milkweed, can make monarchs more vulnerable to predators and parasites.
Some of the plants sold at Las Pilitas Nursery are grown from seed, while others propagated from cuttings.
Some offerings are unique varieties carefully cultivated by the nursery, Nyunt said, such as a hybrid species of penstemon, or, beardtongues, known as Margarita BOP.
The hearty hybrid perennial, which features sky-blue snapdragon-like flowers and deep green linear foliage, got its unusual name from the location where it was found in the 1980s: the bottom of the porch at the La Pilitas garden.
“Every year we talked about how beautiful, neat, clean it was,” the Las Pilitas website said. “The bicycles, skateboards and dogs had run over it tens of times but it still looked good at the Bottom Of the Porch.”
Business was pioneer in selling plants by mail
Las Pilitas Nursery was one of the first places in California to specialize in selling native plants by mail, ensuring that they were available to customers across the state, Nyunt said.
When the shipping side of the business started in the mid-1990s, online plant sales were a relatively new concept, she said.
“I remember my mom trying to put plants in bags on the living room floor,” Nyunt said. “It was the most ridiculous thing. ... (At the time) people didn’t do this.”
Today, mail-order plants is one of the most profitable components of the business, she said.
When Las Pilitas Nursery closed to in-person shopping in 2020, Nyunt and her brother continued to ship plants grown on the family farm to gardeners across the state and nation.
Siblings take over Santa Margarita company
Over the years, Nyunt and her brother Ian have worked to maintain Las Pilitas Nursery’s legacy as a leading cultivator of California native plants — developing interests and talents that line up well with the family business.
Ian Wilson, a computer programmer who studied mathematics at Cal Poly, handles accounting and website functionality for the company.
He also tries to reign in all his older sister’s big ideas, according to the website.
Nyunt, who graduated from Cal Poly with bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 2003, handles most of the nursery and cultivation. It’s a role that comes to her naturally, she said.
“My mom sometimes says that I’m like a little baby Bert because I’m very much like him but the female version of him,” Nyunt said.
Despite that, Nyunt said, taking over the nursery following her dad’s death was a struggle.
“The main person who did most of the stuff (was) just gone overnight,” she said, so the siblings had to learn how to do many things from scratch.
When her dad died, Nyunt recalled, the region was experiencing a terrible drought. She remembers throwing plants into trailers and moving them throughout the property so they could get some water as the nursery’s supply dwindled.
In 2016, a wildfire burned the hill across from the nursery and melted its plastic water tank in the middle of summer. Fortunately, Nyunt and her brother Ian were able to secure a replacement quickly.
She remembers trees on fire falling down around them as they scrambled to get the new water tank installed.
“We’re just out there in the dark. We’re filthy. We probably haven’t eaten much that day, (and we’re) desperately trying to get the water back together,” she recalled.
The same year, Las Pilitas Nursery closed its second location in Escondido after about 16 years.
“We were just struggling out here by ourselves,” Nyunt said. “It was like that for like 10 years.”
Closing the nursery to in-person sales for the past three years gave Nyunt and her family time to regroup after years of grief and environmental crises, she said.
Now they’re ready to reopen.
“I really miss seeing people,” Nyunt said. “I think it’s really important to be back where people can come and ask questions.”
More about Las Pilitas Nursery
Las Pilitas Nursery is located at 3232 Las Pilitas Road in Santa Margarita. The nursery is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday in October and November and select days in December.
For more information, go to laspilitas.com.
This story was originally published September 13, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
