About Flora Grubb
Flora Grubb is, in fact, a real person — and yes, that’s her real name.
Co-Founder, Co-owner and guiding force behind Flora Grubb Gardens, Flora is a self-taught gardener, designer, and nurseryman whose work has reshaped the way Californians think about gardens. For more than two decades, she has led with the conviction that landscapes can be both lavishly beautiful and ecologically intelligent.
Roots and Inspiration
Flora grew up in Austin, Texas, where early years of drought shaped her deep respect for water and resilience in the garden. With no formal training in horticulture or business — she famously left high school and learned everything by doing — she moved to San Francisco in 1999 and began a small landscaping business. A few years later, she and her business partner Saul Nadler opened the first Flora Grubb Gardens, creating a nursery unlike any other: part design studio, part community gathering place, and entirely dedicated to the art of sustainable gardening. See Flora talk about her design philosophy on The Central Texas Gardener.
A Philosophy of Beauty and Ecology
Under Flora’s leadership, Flora Grubb Gardens has remained committed to “making lavishly beautiful gardens that require minimal water and chemicals to maintain.” Every display, plant, and design element reflects Flora’s belief that gardens are not luxuries or possessions, but living, evolving environments that teach us about impermanence, interconnection, and care.
She often says that her stores should feel like “a dream of a garden” — immersive, inspiring spaces that invite people to reimagine how they might live outdoors. The nursery’s design-driven approach helps visitors visualize not just what to plant, but how to inhabit their landscapes beautifully and sustainably.
See Flora Talk about her stores in a video by Martha Stewart Living
Community and Craft
Flora’s warmth as a collaborator and educator shines through everything she does. She’s built her business as a haven for people who want to work among plants, creating meaningful blue-collar jobs for artists in the medium of living things. Her staff share knowledge daily — on the sales floor, in the greenhouse, and across seasons. Many go on to start their own design firms, write garden books, or contribute to California’s thriving garden culture. Others stay for decades, becoming the heart of the nursery itself.
Behind the scenes, Saul Nadler and longtime General Manager Gregg Opgenorth oversee Grubb & Nadler Nurseries — a vertically integrated growing operation that produces roughly 80% of the plants sold at Flora Grubb Gardens. This control over quality and supply allows the business to keep prices stable, champion rare species, and maintain the highest horticultural standards even as the industry evolves.
A Life in Gardens
Flora lived for many years in San Francisco’s Mission District, near her first nursery on Guerrero Street. After her son Greyson was born in 2008, the two moved to Berkeley, where she created her now-famous home garden — featured in Martha Stewart Living, Sunset Magazine, and numerous other publications. The garden remains a touchstone for design-driven, low-water gardening in California.
Whether collaborating with designers, guiding generations of homeowners, or curating rare plant collections, Flora remains rooted in her original belief:
“A garden can be so much more than a thing we own or products we buy. In relationship with our gardens, we learn about life and death, about impermanence, about our place in the living world.”
A garden’s furnished spaces tend to evolve over time, too, as you learn how best to enjoy the light and shade in different seasons. Flora’s gardens—both the manicured front yard and the wilder, more free-form backyard—were designed to allow her and Greyson to follow the sun throughout the day, with sitting and lounging areas sprinkled everywhere.
Flora loves covered spaces because you can use them spontaneously, without having to sweep or mess around with the furniture much. Blankets, pillows, and rugs make these spaces feel like additional rooms of the house, to be used just as comfortably and as often as the indoor rooms.
Planting a garden is a journey, and we hope the journey of Flora’s garden inspires you! Just for fun, here’s what the outside of her house looked like before:
For more inspiration and some helpful tips, you can read about the different stages of Flora’s garden in Martha Stewart Living, from 2016; in Sunset Magazine’s 2019 cover story; and in another recent Sunset article.