After 90 years of breeding and promoting uncommon camellias and azaleas to clients everywhere in the world, Nuccio’s Nurseries in Altadena is predicted to shut by the tip of 2025. However the ongoing Eaton fireplace and its ashy aftermath don’t look like providing the ending the nursery’s house owners had in thoughts.
The Eaton fireplace swept into the Chaney Path Street neighborhood someday early on Jan. 8, leap-frogging some houses and gutting others. The nursery’s outdated household dwelling burned to the bottom, as did a number of picket outbuildings. The small home was the place Tom Nuccio, 77, who co-owns the nursery together with his brother Jim, 75, lived.
Tom Nuccio was within the hospital for non-life-threatening points when the fireplace erupted. Their 92-year-old cousin Vicky, who additionally lived in the home, was safely evacuated.
Miraculously, the fireplace barely touched the realm of the nursery the place hundreds of potted camellias and azaleas had been prepared on the market underneath a breezy wood-lathe framework lined by shade fabric.
A couple of of the crops close to the burned constructions had been singed, and plenty of within the nursery’s shade space had been pushed over by wind gusts reportedly approaching 100 mph. However the nursery’s large oak tree and plenty of of its tall camellia bushes appeared unscathed.
In a December 2024, picture, Jim, left, and Tom Nuccio stand in entrance of one of many nursery’s ramshackle wooden storage buildings and a profusely blooming deep pink camellia generally known as Dazzler, a spread developed by the Nuccio household. Neither the constructing nor the plant survived the fireplace.
(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Instances)
The issue now’s water. The camellias and azaleas had been final watered Jan. 7, and the new dry Santa Ana winds suck moisture from even well-hydrated potted crops. Jim Nuccio figures that their crops, that are simply value at the very least tens of hundreds of {dollars}, can survive maybe one other week with out water.
He’s been in a position to go to the nursery solely twice for the reason that fireplace started, as soon as by sneaking alongside again roads Jan. 8 earlier than officers curtailed entry to the burned areas, and once more for a brief go to over the weekend.
In the course of the latter go to, he was in a position to seize about 125 of the rarest varieties for 2 botanical gardens, Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, which has one of many world’s most well-known camellia collections, and the Huntington Library, Artwork Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
“We wanted to do this anyway [donate their rarest camellias] because those gardens have been customers for years, and we thought, ‘There’s no better time then now while the plants are still alive.’ People won’t be able to buy them, but at least they’ll be able to see them.”
Donating the crops isn’t a giant deal, he mentioned, laughing: “We haven’t made money in 90 years, so why start now?”
Two days after the Eaton fireplace raged via Nuccio’s Nurseries in Altadena, the realm remains to be smoking. Many bushes, shrubs and nearly all its potted camellias and azaleas survived unscathed.
(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Instances)
The nursery went up on the market in 2023, and it had a potential purchaser, Pasadena’s Polytechnic College. Nevertheless, the college pulled out after months of group opposition to its plan to create an athletic complicated on a part of the property. The Nuccio household started talks in December with the Belief for Public Land, however the Eaton fireplace has put negotiations on maintain.
Jim Nuccio mentioned he’s been inundated with calls from folks wanting to assist. A longtime buyer in San Diego, Kathy Liu of Joey’s Wings Basis, began a GoFundMe web page for the nursery with a aim of $18,000 to assist cowl bills.
The Nuccio brothers “are the kindest people I know of,” Liu wrote on the GoFundMe web page, including that her basis has been working with the nursery for six years to promote camellias as a fundraiser within the Bay Space and in San Deigo.
“The last fundraiser with the nursery was just last month in December, 2024,” Liu wrote. “We sold over 1,000 pots of camellias in [the] Bay Area and San Diego. The brothers drove two trucks of camellias all the way from Altadena to the San Francisco Bay Area and they refused to let us pay for any cost, including the camellias.”
Tom Nuccio walks underneath a towering oak tree and a row of tall planted camellias in 2023. The nursery’s bushes and potted crops round them escaped injury within the Eaton fireplace.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Instances)
Jim Nuccio brushed that reward apart. He and his brother are grateful for the fundraising, he mentioned, however there are others in Altadena with far larger wants. (Jim Nuccio’s dwelling in Altadena was spared; he and his spouse, Judith, have been evacuated for the reason that fireplace started.)
For now, the Nuccio brothers are hoping that they’ll get an opportunity to wind down the nursery on their very own phrases, however that can require getting water to their thirsty crops very quickly.
“A few of our azaleas are already starting to wilt, but most of the camellias are fine under the shade cloth, at least for now,” Jim Nuccio mentioned. “I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll get a chance to reopen. Hopefully, they’ll get our reservoirs replenished.” And, he mentioned, he’d heard studies of potential rain later within the month.
Then he trailed off all of the sudden and sighed. “But I’m not banking on any of that.”
