25 fantastic SoCal plant shops for holiday gifts

For more than 30 years the Rosales family has run a sprawling, 1-acre open-air nursery in Baldwin Hills, offering native plants, drought-tolerant plants, vegetable starts, fruit trees and a wide variety of decorative shrubs, trees and succulents, with many of the plants grown in their production facilities in Temecula. In 2021, the family opened its second location, C&S Garden Center, in Lawndale, with a wide selection of indoor plants, vegetable seedlings, garden tools (including a line of Japanese Kinboshi pruning and trimming shears), accessories, tons of colorful containers and even raw organic honey harvested from the family-owned ranch in Tecate, Mexico. They create cozy plant and furniture nooks for chilling in the store, with instructions on how to re-create the scene at home, so if you’re looking for green inspiration, you can sit comfortably and take in all the surrounding plants.