Saratoga News Photograph by George Sakkestad Ed Carman's roots are deep in the community as well as in the world of horticulture. Local nurseryman Ed Carman continues doing what he loves By Mary Ann Cook Ed Carman is one of the most widely respected people in the field of horticulture. He is an expert on wisteria; he was the first to introduce kiwi into the state, and he is known as the one to ask about any hard-to-find plant. Local and not-so-local nurseries know that if he doesn't grow it himself, he'll know where to find it. But don't expect Carman to mention any of these achievements. Only when newspaper and magazine articles are offered, or the book about him is brought forward, can one learn something of the impact that Carman has made as a lifelong nurseryman. Carman's reputation is not only national, but international among those who grow unusual plants. He was chosen by UC-Berkeley's Bancroft Library to be the one horticulturist in the state to be documented in an oral history book about his life and contributions, a book recently published. Carman's roots are deep in the Los Gatos Hills. Lexington, to be exact. His father owned a nursery on Bascom Avenue where Cosentino's sits now. Carman worked there from the start of the business--as a teenager, then after the war. He graduated in the Los Gatos High School class of '41. During the war years, he was on the staff in the Judge Advocate's office, "putting pins in colored maps in the general's office all across Europe," he says. In 1944 he married high school sweetheart Eleanor Jean Campbell. With last names close in the alphabet, they sat next to each other in study hall and romance was inevitable. Together they bought a nursery in 1960, and continued to run it as a family business from its new location on Mozart Avenue, off Los Gatos Boulevard on the northeast side where Highway 85 now intersects. Jean did the books, but today osteoporosis confines her mostly to bed. Daughter Nancy works at the nursery three days a week. There are two other grown daughters--Trisha, a librarian, and Diane, director of a Sunnyvale pre-school. Today Carman's Nursery concentrates on "perennials and unusual things," as Ed Carman puts it. Some of the unusual things are rock garden and bonsai materials. He was the first to import kiwi vines from New Zealand, but the kiwi craze has come and gone, he says. Raising kiwi isn't remunerative enough and besides, the vines take a lot of pruning. But they are still evident on a Carman front-yard fence. "Plants go in cycles. Perennials are big right now. And people are putting in more ponds. With pliable plastic available, ponds are easy to put in and maintenance is minimal, unless you're growing koi," Carman says. "But if you have a good balance of fish, snails and plants in your pond, the right balance will take care of the maintenance," Carman says. Years back, Carman's Nursery was the first to carry water lilies. Today the economy doesn't support an operation like Carman's Nursery. Older owners are retiring, and the younger generation isn't anxious to work seven days a week. Chains are replacing small, owner-operated nurseries and the land has become too valuable to remain in nurseries. All these factors mean the end of his way of life, of his way of nursery management. But he himself will never retire. "Since Jean can't travel, I'm doing exactly what I'd be doing anyway," he says. "This is all I know." But all he knows about growing plants could run rings around everyone else, even other nurserymen. A Palo Alto landscape designer who who has made regular runs to Carman's Nursery for years says none of the plants she has ever bought from him have died. That's a testimonial to the depth of his commitment and one of the things he's proudest of. There's a Philadelphia grower who makes an annual pilgrimage to Carman's Nursery just to purchase what Carman is growing now. There are a clutch of people in England, in New Zealand, in Africa--in all the places Carman exports plants to--who consider him top of the line, their plant guru. He says, however, "If you don't keep a rock garden or perennials, you wouldn't know me." Maybe. Or maybe not. Witness: He's judged the San Mateo County Fair for years, he was a charter member of the Western Horticultural Society--president several times--and was on the Saratoga Horticulture board of directors and seven other professional organizations. He is an accomplished photographer, his work having appeared in seven magazines. He spearheaded the drive to replant the demonstration garden in Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco. An article about Carman's rock garden describes it as "spare, subtle, elegant and evocative of something larger." If this sounds more like a definition of Ed Carman himself than a rock garden, you've got the idea. Carman's Nursery is open Sunday-Monday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., by appointment only. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, November 4, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.