In Memory of Bert Wilson

It is with great sadness that we must report on the passing of Las Pilitas Nursery founder and legend Bert Wilson. The California native plant community has lost an extremely valuable member.

Bert had a huge influence on our knowledge and our gardens. The Las Pilitas  website is the go-to site for information on California native plants and many of our gardens are full of plants from the nursery. Those of us fortunate enough to have had personal communication hold him in very high regard. A bit of his passion and dedication will live on in the many people he reached.

We extend our sympathy to Bert’s family — Celeste, Penny, Ian and Valerie. May we offer these Bert-isms from the CNPS-SLO community as comfort in your time of loss.

Notes From Our Community

I always enjoyed my time at the chaos of that nursery. He always extended me the greatest and broadest invitation to roam about the beds looking for overlooked treasures. I would take the long way over the La Panza summit and down the Pozo Road, just so I could swing by the nursery.

Bert took time with even the least experienced, to educate them. I remember showing up with a teacher who wanted to landscape a school with natives; Bert gave a curt “Plant Coyote Bush, so at least something will survive.” But it was just to judge our commitment, and once he softened us up, he loaded us up with plants and rarities.

I believe on his favorite subject of soil micro-ecology and symbionts, his promotion of native microrhizae changed California restoration. Even tomatoes are being grown with specialized soil microbes by gardeners such as Ralph Johnson that tell me they first learned about micro-ecology from Bert’s website and frequent discussion.

I don’t know all of his introductions to horticulture, but “Powerline Pink” (Salvia spathacea) and Pozo Blue are favorites of mine and have inspired me to turn a keen eye to finding selections in our native flora. He actually tested fire resistance of chaparral shrubs and likely saved enormous swathes of landscape by being able to defend keeping the species that are far more fire resistant than the dry grass firebreaks that were promoted to replace them. His website, hundreds of pages, has been a go-to site for real horticultural tips for a decade. -John Chesnut

What a loss! Bert was one of the founders of the Wildflower Weekend that was such a success for many years. -Dave K

Bert was a marvelous resource about native plants when no one else knew about them. I have every one of their catalogs since they started out and I learned so much from my visits to the nursery, the websites and their catalogs. The visits were a hoot. Even if Bert didn’t want to sell one of his babies to you because you lived in a zone where it wouldn’t thrive, Celeste would sell it while he went off grumbling. I remember so many visits where he showed off his newly grown babies and was so proud of them. He had character, he was a character, he was memorable and I learned so much from him. -Heather

I have been going out there for maybe forty years now and was there again a few weeks ago and I have always appreciated having the California natives that are available the Las Pilitas Nursery. Penny is now doing an amazing job out there, along with her mother. Bert Wilson’s work has had a big influence throughout the state. -Mardi

Bert was always so generous to me with his time and advice when I called asking questions. -Susi

I think we all have “Bert stories.” In our case, he was the only nurseryman who figured out what would grow on the abominable soil found in the area where we live in SLO and that he did from his property without visiting the site, 50 miles away. Bert called it “yellow clay” and recommended ten different species which all have managed to survive when everything has not. He took the time to listen to our stories of woe and come up the perfect answer, while everyone else we had asked at the time had no clue. That’s real intuition! -Bill Waycott