There are several very gigantic growers up in the northeast. One is
Ivy Acres the other Kurt Weiss, both on eastern Long Island. They
supply most of the box stores with annuals and possibly perennials.
When I worked at Ivy Acres they great tens of millions of flats of
annuals, poinsettia's, mums and were experimenting with perennials.
That was about 20 years ago.

In Texas there's Hines, Color Spot and several other giant growers for
the box stores, but if you want the plants you see in the catalogs you
have to visit the small garden centers who hand pick their plants
based on industry trends.

Support your local garden centers.

Victoria

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 06:42:13 -0400, Jenny
wrote:

This year it seems that just about every one of the local nurseries is
selling branded plants that come from maybe three big growers. This is
true of both annuals and perennials.

I'm also seeing a trend where instead of selling six packs of annuals
for $2 -$3 they're selling one plant (not all that better looking than
one in a healthy six pack) for $3.50 or more.

Who are these companies who seem to have taken over the nursery
business? Where are they? What's going on here?

I'm finding it VERY hard to find locally grown plants, which bums me
out. The other thing that really bothers me is the uniformity of the
offerings. Since I'm seeing the same nursery stock everywhere, I'm also
seeing the same cultivars everywhere, which is making it tougher to find
interesting things to plant.

What's the story here?