"A sense of time lies heavy on such a place. Yearly, since the ice age it has awakened each spring to the clangor of cranes. The peat layers that comprise the bog are laid down in the basin of an ancient lake. The cranes stand, as it were, upon the sodden pages of their own history. These peats are the compressed remains of the mosses that clogged the pools, of the tamaracks that spread over the moss, of the cranes that bugled over the tamaracks since the retreat of the ice sheet. An endless caravan of generations has built of its own bones this bridge into the future, this habitat where the oncoming host again may live, breed and die."
Aldo Leopold, The Quality of Landscape
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What began as a small project has evolved through the years. In 2015, on the heels of one of the then deepest droughts on record for California, a conversation developed around what would become of our gardens and landscapes. Anza was born out of a desire and effort to help residents embrace a new relationship with the landscape. It began as a project of sorts that was as much about design as it was about engaging people and communities in a process....a process for seeing, exploring and understanding the surrounding landscape. Much of this work centered on connecting people and places with the wonderment and beauty of endemic plants. And today, that project has become Anza Design and Nursery....and we do just that: we grow plants and design gardens.
Zach Tanner is a licensed landscape architect who has worked on a range of projects throughout California. In 2014, after working 12 years as a landscape architect in the Bay Area, Zach moved to southern California to begin a new life raising a young family. But, in 2018 the opportunity arose to put down roots along California’s immersive central coast. And here we are today.