When Mike Lee opened Colvos Creek Nursery in 1975, he had no intention of going into the mail-order business. A full-time landscape architect in Seattle, Lee planned on growing large numbers of a few hard-to-find plants to build a successful wholesale nursery in the Seattle area. But sometimes you get a customer you just can’t say “no” to. In Lee’s case, this customer was the late J.C. Raulston, who at the time was director of the North Carolina State University Arboretum (now the J.C. Raulston Arboretum). In 1983, Raulston dropped into Colvos Creek during a whirlwind tour of the Northwest and, shortly thereafter, he placed an order for several plants, including the Australian tea tree (Leptospermum scoparium).

“I really wasn’t set up for mail-order,” Lee says. “But I went ahead and boxed up the plants and sent them on to North Carolina.” A few days later, he received a phone call from Raulston. The plants had arrived intact, but had been rather shaken during their journey. “Raulston gave us some hints on how to pack plants for shipping,” Lee recalls with a laugh. “From that point on we were a retail mail-order nursery.”

In the intervening years, Colvos Creek has quietly emerged as an important resource for plant enthusiasts across the country. And although he still plans to expand into wholesale, Lee has taken on his role as the owner of a retail specialty nursery with a vengeance. Following his theory that if you grow an interesting plant “someone will want it,” the nursery’s catalog boasts an impressive array of rare trees and shrubs as well as a few uncommon northwestern native perennials.

Located on Vashon Island, Washington—a 20-minute ferry ride from the coast of Seattle—Colvos Creek Nursery escapes the colder microclimates that many nurseries in the Northwest face. The island is within USDA Zone 9a, while Seattle falls into slightly cooler Zone 8. “The warmer, sunnier conditions here on the island allow me to play around with a wide variety of plants,” Lee explains. A quick glance through the catalog supports his claim: Its pages feature an intriguing blend of native and exotic plants—from Lewis’s monkeyflower (Mimulus lewisii), a perennial native to the Northwest—to an Appalachian shrub intriguingly named ratstripper (Paxistima canbyi). From South America comes the Chilean fire tree (Embothrium coccineum), a tender evergreen featuring showy red tubular flowers, while from southeastern Australia comes royal grevillea (Grevillea victoriae), a shrub in the protea family that has silvery green leaves and red flowers in pendulous terminal racemes. And from the Mediterranean comes rockroses (Citus spp.), shrubs with aromatic evergreen leaves and delicate white, pink, rose, or lilac flowers.

Even within more familiar genera, gardeners will find a large assortment to choose from. Need an oak tree for the backyard? Take a look at Colvos’s collection of 40 different species. Or would you rather have a maple? Choose one of the nursery’s 32 Acer species. The nursery also stocks as many as 37 pine species—enough to satisfy even the most diehard collector.

Despite their varied origins, these plants have one thing in common: They all thrive in the Pacific Northwest. “I’m always on the lookout for plants that will grow here,” Lee explains. Of course, just because the nursery’s offerings are geared toward the northwestern gardener doesn’t mean that those in other regions can’t find something for their backyards. Lee estimates that two-thirds of his plants are hardy to Zone 6 and many plants are worth trying in Zone 5 or colder. “People are always testing the limits of what will grow where,” he notes.

“One of the great things about Colvos Creek,” says Sue Marvin, a basket weaver in Tukwila, Washington, “is that you can afford to experiment with different plants because they are small and inexpensive.” Since she discovered Colvos Creek 10 years ago, Marvin has been a steady customer, purchasing new plants each year for her Zone 8 garden. “Somehow I ended up with an Australian theme,” she laughs, explaining that her garden now boasts grevillea, several species of bottlebrush (Callistemon spp.), and more eucalyptus than she can count, including her favorite, snow gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora ssp. niphophila), which has a twisted trunk mottled white, gray, and tan. “When I started gardening, I didn’t want to grow the things you’re supposed to plant around here,” she says. “Fortunately, I learned about Colvos Creek right away, and the possibilities just opened up.”

For plant collectors, Colvos Creek is an indispensable resource. Just ask Charles Keith, a physician and self-described “plant nut” who grows nearly 6,000 species of trees and shrubs on 30 acres in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “Some may say that Colvos is too diverse, but that is precisely what I like about the nursery,” Keith says. Keith has purchased several uncommon maples, including Acer caudatifolium, a rare species native to Taiwan with narrow, slightly lobed leaves, and A. erianthum, a large deciduous shrub from China with starlike, deeply veined, papery leaves. “Many of these plants are not big sellers in the market and Colvos has been the only place in the country where I’ve found them,” he says. This year, Keith is eagerly awaiting his order of A. robustrum, a very rare tree from China that he has never seen for sale in the United States.

Mike Gaborek also looks to Colvos Creek for lesser-known plants that are not available elsewhere. A professional landscape designer by day, Gaborek spends his free time designing his own Zone 7a garden—which he describes as “an extensive collection of weird stuff”—in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Gaborek, who has been dealing with Colvos Creek for five years, has purchased a number of interesting plants, including many unusual New Zealand natives such as Cassinia leptophylla, a white-flowered, heathlike shrub, and several native western sedges (Carex spp.). Gaborek says that lately he has had to look to western plant sources such as Colvos to find the plants he is looking for. “I think the more sophisticated gardeners tend to move out west in their plant searches,” he says. “You just can’t find many of the more unusual plants here in the east.”

Of course, you don’t need to be a plant collector to appreciate Colvos Creek Nursery. All you need is a desire to grow something different. As Lee writes in the introduction to his latest catalog, “If you’re gardening to escape the ordinary, you’ve come to the right place.”

- Christina M. Scott is assistant editor of The American Gardener.