On 8/6/04 12:26, in article ,
"Frogleg" wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 16:56:42 +0100, Sacha
wrote:

"Frogleg" wrote:

To be fair, 'grandiflora' refers to the size of the blooms, not the
tree. (I looked it up :-) 'goliath', however, does seem fairly
obvious.

Agreed but not a lot of small trees have very large flowers on - or not that
I can think of at present! No doubt somebody will come up with a list of
hundreds! 'goliath' is a dead give away. We do find that here, most people
do ask, if in doubt but then there's usually someone around who can help
them. I think one of the problems with some gc's is the 'supermarket'
attitude that is taken. The only person who can actually be found is the
person on the check out.......

Don't you think much of gardening is learning from mistakes? One
starts by thinking "gardening" means putting a seed or plant in dirt
and watching it grow, and moves on from there. Many don't even know to
ask questions, or which questions to ask. If their experience is with
the Big Box stores, they know questions are futile.

That's pretty much what I said and a few of us have pointed out to the OP
that her mistake is only one of many all gardeners make at some time. How
many of us have put the wrong plant in the wrong place and moved it around a
few times - almost all, I should think! I just think it's a shame that the
Magnolia one might have been an expensive one and hope things work out
better than she fears.
When I moved into my last house a previous owner had planted a lovely blue
Cedar in what was not a huge garden, probably because next door did have a
huge garden and a huge blue Cedar. The owners of my house hadn't taken into
account that when their tree was fully grown nobody could have got in the
front door, past its spread branches, so it fell to my unhappy lot to cut it
down, something I do hate doing.
It doesn't become me very well as a Nurseryman's wife to criticise some
garden centres - not all by any means - but the prices they charge, the lack
of advice they give and the 'care' given to the plants which are bought in
and sold off just like any supermarket product, fills us with real horror
and even amazement. One gc is selling Pelargoniums for over £4.00 when we
are charging £1.80 for the same size! But the customer isn't paying for the
plant but for acres and acres of expensive glass housing few plants (and all
of those bog standard) but hundreds of other products, such as candles,
soap, writing paper, cards, sweets, jam, garden furniture, barbecues, water
feechas etc. AND we hear that they are in financial trouble and have had to
lay off staff. The latter applies to another not far away and their answer
has been to do yet another price hike which seems to have resulted in fewer
customers and less profits to pay off the expensive bank loan the extension
to house all the foregoing, cost. The plants? Oh, they're stuck out the
back somewhere.

--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds after garden to email me)