Wholesale Distributor of Plants and Decorative Containers


Sunborne Nursery is a wholesale nursery started in 1975. Our main focus is distributing high quality interior plants and decorative containers to interior and exterior landscapers, garden centers, and other landscape professionals throughout the West Coast. However, in the past couple of years, we have expanded our business to include a growing inventory of succulents and other xeriscape plant material.

What sets us apart from the competition is the fact that we only sell high quality, clean, well-rooted, insect-free plants. We always choose quality over price in making our purchasing decisions.

About Us

Sunborne Nursery started not as a nursery, but as a chicken ranch in the mid 1970’s. One day the bottled-water delivery man suggested that they convert the 50,000 square feet of vacant chicken houses on Dan’s family chicken ranch into greenhouses. It sounded like a reasonable idea, except Dan and his family knew nothing about growing plants. So as a start, Dan enrolled in the Horticulture Department at San Luis Obispo and took some courses with Dr. Noble. During one of the class trips to Gallup and Stribling Orchids of Santa Barbara, Dan had a chance meeting with the president of the foliage division. Not knowing any better, Dan told him about the vacant chicken houses and asked him what opportunities he saw for starting a nursery. He said there was a shortage of tropical foliage propagation material and suggested that Dan go into producing rooted cuttings. He went on to offer stock plants. Dan jumped at the offer and Sunborne Nursery was born.

Since a majority of the cuttings and finished stock plants were initially sold in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dan and Candice decided to move the nursery to San Francisco in 1989. 

In 1991, the business evolved from a growing operation to the wholesale distribution company that it is today. The main customers being interiorscapers, landscapers, designers, and garden centers. While Dan is primarily responsible for sales and purchasing, Eli manages the day to day operations, and Candice, whose background is in art, plays an important part in the aesthetics and design of Sunborne. Together, they have found their calling in the beauty and environmentally enriching qualities of the tropical plant world.

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