About the Nursery
Willows End nursery is in the backyard at the home of Erin and Christopher Cox. We are located in the Pinehurst neighborhood of Northeast Seattle, between Northgate and Lake City. All nursery sales are in person, either during our open gardens, by appointment, or at occasional off-site sales. For a current schedule of open gardens and off-site sales, see the Events page.
All plants are propagated and grown on site in our quarter-acre backyard (we really know how to pack the plants in!).
A portion of the sales area in spring of 2026
What makes us different
The nursery is an evolution of our garden. The majority of the plants we offer for sale are propagated from plants out in the garden. This means when you’re walking around any of our display gardens and a plant catches your eye, there’s a good chance it will be for sale in the nursery. As 2026 is our second year of plant production, we have many shrubs and perennials which are super young and not ready for sale yet, but the diversity of plants will increase every year.
Golden sprays of “Fireworks” goldenrod arch above
purple asters
Last summer, we had a bunch of young divisions of a goldenrod called “Fireworks” available for sale. When our stand of Fireworks bloomed in the garden, everyone wanted to know what that plant was, and whether we had any for sale. Those baby plants sold out fast! That exemplifies the experience we’d like you to have at the garden and nursery.
Locally adapted plants
We are not a big retail nursery, and our plants are not grown in commercial greenhouses. Our plants are grown right here, most with very little protection from the elements. Plants in pots are not as hardy as plants in the ground, so we do use shade cloth to shield many of our plants from the summer sun, and some of the plants will spend the winter under a lightweight fleece frost cloth (primarily to reduce icy winds, which are tough on small plants). Most of the plants, though, are experiencing the local weather here all year round. This is one of the ways we can guarantee that our plants are well adapted to life in the Seattle area.
We do grow a variety of seedlings each year. We “winter sow” many of these, which basically means they spend the winter outdoors, sheltered from the worst of the rain, and they decide when to come up in the spring. Once they do, they are already perfectly hardy. We also do start some seedlings indoors in a protected environment; these will always have been hardened off before they are ready for sale, and will be just fine to go directly in the ground when you buy them.
Climate adapted plants
We believe that one of the most important characteristics to look for in plants for your garden is drought tolerance, translated here as the ability to thrive in the Pacific Northwest’s naturally dry summers with as little irrigation as possible. On the flip side, those same plants have to tolerate our wet winters. Willows End is committed to offering a healthy selection of such plants, both in the display garden and in the nursery. Some of these are true natives to Western Washington, others are from climates around the world reminiscent of ours.