The Watershed Nursery

This Nursery is fantastic for securing true-​to-​place CA natives for creek restorations, etc. Prices are good and selection is outstanding. Plants are also very healthy!
Easy to get to, a little tricky to find, but what good place isn’t? Staff is very helpful as well, with suggesting good plants for difficult areas.

This place is a God send. They make it so easy and affordable to do the right thing by planting plants that are native to California, thus mostly able to go without water for long periods of time. I was able to plant responsibly without killing my budget.
The people who work here are super knowledgable, and the variety of plants is excellent. Honestly, the prices are so good! And it’s in a super cool area in Richmond, not too far from the Richmond Bridge.
I strongly recommend this place to anyone who needs to plant a hill or new garden/​yard who cares about their water bill and the environment. This place rocks!

I’m trying to restore my property with all California native plants. It is hard to find some varieties. On a recent first trip to Watershed Nursery I happen to find some plants that are normally difficult to locate at the other Bay Area nurseries. I was surprised at the vast inventory, selection, and inexpensive prices. I was particularly impressed with how all the plants were so robust and healthy. The staff is genuinely friendly and eager to answer plant questions. Although this is a long drive for me, I most definitely will return for more native stock.

Love this place. I was looking for native plants to grow in my garden and decided to visit The Watershed Nursery in my search. It’s not the largest of nurseries but considering that they specialize in natives, I think it’s pretty sizable and gets the job done. They also update their inventory list online, so checking their website before your visit would be pretty handy.
Finding the nursery: My GPS got me bit lost when I went here. I hadn’t been to this area before so I was clueless as to where to find the nursery. At first the GPS led me to a business complex, but I realized that this is NOT where the nursery is. I decided to continue down Canal Blvd with the water on my left until I came across the sign for the nursery on my right, not too far down from the business building I had first been to. I pulled in and made my way through a gate on the right and parked in a gravel parking space.
The staff were very helpful and knowledgeable in helping me find what I was looking for. All of their plants looked very healthy and happy. Hope to visit again in the future!

Off the beaten track, this nursery is worth finding as the selection of rare and unusual, but easy to grow California Native Plants is fantastic! The plants are healthy, the staff will help you find what will work on your site, and the prices very reasonable. They have a small native garden that I found inspiring.

LOVE this place. Nice selection of healthy native plants and the staff is friendly and knowledgable. Buying a lot of plants gets expensive — but that’s the case no matter where you buy. I highly recommend the Watershed Nursery for your landscaping needs. The only downside is that it’s right next to the sewer treatment plant and depending on the weather conditions the odor can be nasty.

I want to landscape with California native plants so I jumped on a Groupon for the Watershed Nursery. Glad I did!
The staff is very knowledgeable, patient and helpful. Andy helped me come up with a layout plan for my space and offered a nice selection of native flowering plants starting at two bucks. It’s a bit tricky to find but they have a street sign now and are open 6 days a week. You can find all the native plants you want. Very cool!
Parking is easy in their lot.

Wonderful nursery! Went here during the week on my lunch hour and was met with knowledgable staff and a GREAT variety of plants! I highly recommend visiting this nursery!

If you have complained about the weekend only hours you can retract that now. Watershed is now open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 – 4. This place was easy to get to, easy to find, (detailed directions on their website) and I could not believe the diverse selection of plants. The woman who helped me was friendly, kind, patient, and knowledgeable. She explained how the plants are arranged according to how much sun they will tolerate. Friendly, sweet dog came to greet me, too.
I took the native gardens tour last May, and saw a lot of the same stuff throughout, but Watershed has varieties of plants I didn’t see on the tour, which was exciting. The tree selection was very limited, but there were so many choices for flowering plants, more than I expected. Everything is pretty clearly labeled with photos, descriptions and scientific names. There are seedlings as well as plants in 5-​gallon containers. There are some rarer plants there, too.
This is not a beautiful nursery, there is no shade, and the ground is covered with gravel, and plants are all arranged neatly in rows. I was expecting to find a lot of weedy looking plants, of which there are plenty, but I was surprised at the selection of really striking, beautiful plants as well. A lot of loving care is evident here, and there are some nice display gardens along the perimeters to check out, so you can see how the plants fill in once they’re out of their «shoes» and in the ground.
I highly recommend this place, and I will be going back for sure. You should go here!

Amazing NATIVE PLANT nursery.
‘Watershed’ means the drainage basin of one particular river or creek. For this nursery, it means all their plants are LOCAL, grown from seeds collected right here. The appropriate genome, subspecies, perfectly adapted to our climate. Plants are arranged by microclimate, (sun, chaparral, riparian). If you are passionate about native plants of the Bay Area, this is the place to go.
I visit this nursery twice a year, during their sales, and fill my car. Their plants are among the most vigorous I have ever seen. They don’t look like much at the nursery, but the little tufts of green, in their ‘testubes’ of dirt, are poised, ready to take off and grow with joy when they are planted. The austere conditions they are grown in creates tough little plants.
Just what you need if you are interested in restoration. Or want to add a few tough native beauties to a more traditional landscape.

Negative reviews of this place are bizarre at best. Their are their hours and their location is what it is. Morever, they don’t have stuff other nurseries have because they only sell natives. Their business description is accurate. My daughter and I came her looking to populate our front yard. The woman helping us was friendly and very interested in doing us good. After an hourse of conversing we got a cart full of cool stuff at good price. If it’s not your scene go somewhere else but don’t bash it.

For native plants, this is the place to be! Great customer service and I could find what I was looking for.

Only open on the weekends?
Bizarre experience trying to find this place, across from the railroad tracks, just a block or so south of the biomed business park.
Look for a small sandwich board sign at curb level, turn right and proceed on the dirt path until a green fence is spotted. Drive THRU that gate (yep) and there’s a gravel ‘parking lot’ and one will see the limited inventory that is sold here.“only on the weekends”. Small operation, as is evident.
There’s a small trailer parked on the premises, and not an exactly welcoming experience once i arrived. more like watershed ghost town. Course I haven’t had a chance to examine what sort of native horticulture abounds, but I certainly, from quick glance, gathered this nursery sells eclectic inventory.
This is not the place to come looking for general type nursery inventory; believe you me, it aint’ here.

What I liked: This is the place to get natives really cheap — including small ones for about $ 5. Wow! And the staff were very accessible.
What I didn’t like: All of the plants were kept in full hot sun, and the more shade-​loving plants looked stressed. Most of them recovered when planted, but a couple of them never did. Also, it’s right next to a sewage treatment plant or something, & on a hot day it smells nasty. Bring a scented bandana? ;)

Native plant sanctuary… great owner, great, great, great selection… easy to understand and learn. Just hard to find and hours are limited. When you see the sign, go to the right and then to the right again. Aim towards the fence covered in screening… not the business yard.
Tomorrow I am planting some of my new darlings and looking forward to more!
By the way, I had already search the Berkeley Horti, the Magic Garden much less the big chain stores… I like this one for Natives.

If you are looking for California native plants for your garden or for a restoration project, these are the folks to talk to. As a professional, I plant a lot of nursery stock, and I have had nothing but success with the plants from this reasonably priced nursery. Healthy, vigorous specimens grown mainly in tubes, for excellent root growth. Plus, these ladies don’t have the native plant snobbery that sometimes comes with the industry.