"Warren" wrote:

Doug Kanter wrote:

No wonder they're doing it. I was there 2 days ago. 80% of their plants
were ready to drop dead. Meanwhile, 5 minutes away, 2 locally owned
nurseries were selling plants that looked like they were ready to be
photographed for a plant catalog.

The Home Depot in my area doesn't have a wide selection of plants, but what
they do have is usually in pretty good shape.

All the Home Depots may look alike. And they may have theoretical procedures
that should be followed at every store. And they may have centralized
buyers. But when you get to the garden center, each of them is just a
single, stand-alone store. Some take good care of their plants. Some don't.

Very true. The HD down the street reogranized the garden center and it
is laid out better. They also had a better selction thisyear than
lastm, but they got the selection late. That said it is very easy to
find dry pots & wilted plants.

And that's probably why they're training their garden center personnel.

I worked in retail for years and I saw extensive training done
reepeatedly. In a place like a nursery you need to know what your
doing. The Same HD had all the seed rack outside in the rain. The
paper envelopes of seeds were all soaked. If you understand that water
is a major trigger for germination you know that is a dumb thing, but
no one, including the managers at home depot could see how dumb it
was.

They probably wouldn't train people beyond general good basics and
principles. Hot weather, more watering, cooler weather, less.

That said I was at a large professional nursery and going through the
back lots found entire lots of petunias sickly and dying. Obviously
diseased. I also saw a bunhc of cabbage moths visiting the broccoli.
Those types of problems I expect to be beyond any sales person except
for a profesional in the industry long term. (or a hobbyist)

DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email)
Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY, 1 mile off L.I.Sound
3rd year gardener
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/royalf...=/2055&.src=ph