California Carnivores, We’re Sad

We got the email that California Carnivores is shutting the doors to the public. It was twenty minutes after I discovered they have a newish TikTok account, which lessened the blow. They also have a YouTube channel with all kinds of excellent info about making your own bog garden and growing all kinds of carnies, plus there’s a ton of info about growing carnies on their website. They will continue to sell plants online as well. Damon and Peter deserve to be able to take weekends off, owning and running a nursery is not easy. I’m so happy we’ve been able to visit so many times over the years. Above is one of my all time favorite pictures of Zoe I’ve ever taken (it’s still my phone screen background) from Damon’s special collection area.

I think the first time we made the trip to CC was in 2010 based on photographic evidence. We own not one, but TWO Conservatory of Flowers huge Chomp posters from their fabulous shows and I think we first heard about the nursery through the show there. When we first moved to SF we would look for free plants on craigslist. Someone was offering up pitcher plant root balls, so we picked them up from their porch in a little plastic baggie of sphagnum moss and I grew my first Sarracenias. It kind of felt like a drug deal, and Matti thought I was crazy. Here are a bunch of my favorite pics from the nursery over the years.

This will always be my favorite carnie I’ve ever grown. I’m pretty sure it was purchased on our first visit to California Carnivores in 2010. One day a large colony of ants crawled in to one of its first pitchers, they all drowned in the pitcher and the plant got HUGE.

The venus fly trap costume I found at the Bayview Goodwill for $8 in September 2015. It’s one of my best thrifting scores over the years of finding cool stuff.