4-year-update: All the plants I have purchased from Rana are absolutely THRIVING. Also, I am very grateful to the Rana staff for their willingness to help me troubleshoot a few of the plants that got initially a slow start.
(Turns out a few of the plants needed more sun. I had planted them in what I had *thought* was a sunny spot...but it was East-facing and Carmel gets a lot of fog. Later I transplanted them, at Pedro's suggestion, into the sunniest spot on my property, on a south-facing bank -- and voila. Problem = solved.)
Zooming out a little, it's also worth keeping this saying in mind: "First they sleep, then they creep, then they leap." The reality is that drought-resistant CA natives can sometimes be a little more slow on the "leaping" process than common ornamentals because their energy will be going more into root production and establishing a symbiotic relationship with the soil mycorrhizae* during the first couple years.
By year 3, all my plants from Rana had truly started LEAP and now they have graduated from drip irrigation and are their own self-sufficient beauties.
The plants from Rana are truly top-notch. Go in with some foundational plant knowledge, and prepare to leave very, very, happy.
P.S. *mycorrhizae = the fungal network through which most CA natives get much of their water. (It's one of the basics of understanding CA native plant ecology.) Even if you didn't know that, you should at the very least know the plants you want by their specific epithet (i.e. scientific/Latin) Name before attempting to shop wholesale.
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Dear other Yelp reviewers: Stop complaining about lack of labeling. The labels are indeed there, with at least one white label tag per each section of plants. It's not Rana's fault if you feel overwhelmed or if only know the Common Name of a plant and/or have no idea how to identify it visually. It sounds to me like maybe you shouldn't have been attempting to shop wholesale to begin with.
Want to go buy some Toyon? The label at Rana (and just about all wholesale nurseries, for that matter) will read "Heteromeles arbutifolia." Toyon is just the Common Name. In other regions, people might call it California Holly. (One plant usually has several common names.) That is the wholesale nursery only uses the Scientific Name...to avoid ambiguity.
So please, to those grumpy Yelp reviewers out there...how about you spend a little more time studying up on your plant knowledge, and a little less time complaining about a nursery who is simply doing things by the industry standard for wholesale? read more
