About Arboreum

We offer the finest of all fruits that can produce in our own climate. We cannot know the growing conditions elsewhere and do not make recommendations for all our public, wherever they may live, with unreserved guarantee. But we can say that the varieties you find here are the very best of their kind, and all written sources we have found are in agreement.

Where do other nurseries obtain fine and rare varieties? Odds are, from us. No other nursery has maintained such a comprehensive source orchard of fruits over such a long period of time. We have been providing our varietal material to tradesmen for many years and you will recognize many of our varieties offered in their catalogs.   We are the guys who saved America’s fruit varieties. Fully half of the US national collections of stone fruit varieties have come directly from us. We make them available in retail quantities to the public.

We know that to have the finest of fruits, means to grow it ourselves. Our own mother block is the exclusive source of propagating material used in the nursery. Without a doubt, it is the finest private collection of fruit varieties. The orchard can only be as god as the varieties planted and the care given. We produce for sale each variety in very small numbers. It is not commercially feasible to propagate more than a small choice of our varieties in each season. What we offer changes with each year, and our public is asked to keep this always in mind. We cannot emphasize enough to ORDER NOW, because these varieties may not be available again for several years. We only propagate sufficient numbers of each to assure that all our stocks are sold as soon as we enter the shipping season, which commences in late January.

Our public appreciates that fruit trees cannot be better grown than in the dry climate of California. The growing season is nearly twice that of any other nursery region. This permits extraordinary vigor and size in the first year of growth from bud, at which stage our trees are ready for dispatch to you. There are simply no “seconds” and nothing “held over.” Hardiness of root and scion are of course genetically determined, and Californian trees are at least the match of any grown elsewhere. Better, we think, as our trees have put in an extraordinarily long summer’s growth before their first winter in your garden.

About plant health. Viruses are the greatest challenge to the propagator of plants. Many of our country’s finest fruit varieties exist only in virus-infected form. ‘Muster’ apple and ‘Panamint’ nectarine are among many indispensable but virus-infected fruits. There is no nuclear stock program for these, though nurserymen propagate them and home gardeners still plant them and enjoy the fruits they produce. Under our conditions, they yield typical fruits and remain productive over a long life. Outside California, the vigor of virus-infected stock may be compromised when subjected to multiple causes of stress, and may not be reliably hardy. We indicate any known virus-infected varieties in our descriptions.

Some of our public have requested an opportunity to taste the fruits before committing garden space to a variety. We do not offer tours nor perform fruit tasting but there is one who does, not far from our own orchard: Andy Mariani of Andy’s Orchard in Morgan Hill, California. Andy, the famous commercial grower of tree-ripened fruits in Santa Clara Valley, offers several opportunities during the summer season to try new and old fruit varieties. Many of these are the varieties of trees we sell. In fact, from time to time Andy collects fruits from our orchard to fill out his display! The dates for tastings in 2019 are not yet determined. There is a charge and schedule is subject to change, so check Andy’s website at http://www.AndysOrchard.com