In article , "Cereoid+10+"
wrote:

The problem is that nowadays they all tend to purchase their plants from the
same wholesalers who don't give a fig about the proper identification of
plants. It is much cheaper to buy the plants from wholesalers than for them
to grow the plants themselves and there is little incentive to take the time
to bother to properly label the plants because the vast majority of people
who buy plants are uninformed and don't care what the names are. Most people
throw away the labels as soon as they stick the plants in soil.

It would be easy to avoid places like Lowes & Home Depot, & support the
independent nurseries. Find a nursery (or a half-dozen favorite nurseries)
that for the most part have knowledgeable owners & employees, most of
which will keep copies of handy garden guides out for customers to thumb
through & look things up before settling on a purchase. Now & then for
something really common but likeable it's fine to save some money getting
it at Lowes for cheapo, but for trustworthy tags & helpful information &
for plants not already too bloody overused elsewhere in your neighborhood,
stick to the better nurseries. Whenever I do get something from Lowes I
feel like I've deprived the better nursery owners who've done me a lot of
good favors over time. And if you're not looking for the 20 most
mass-produced plants of all time, which are rightly low-priced, you soon
discover that better plants from better sources don't really cost a great
deal more -- often the better stock costs the same, even if independent
nurseries can't beat a Lowe's one-dollar sale price on gallon pots of
mass-produced stuff.

Poor tagging & lousy information can certainly be had from some
independent nurseries as not all are run equally well. And occasionally a
very small nursery is run by an eccentric who can answer any question you
have, & about half the time get it wrong, though it's easy to avoid those
places too if it's annoying. One of my favorite nurseries for healthy
plants many of them locally uncommon is a total "no tags" nursery. The
woman who runs it follows you around eager tot answer questions, but
speaks mediocre English & sometimes can't quite tell you verbally what
something is. A lot of it she grows herself. Took me forever to find out
the spirea I obtained from her was an "Elf's Home Spirea" which I've never
seen in any other nursery around here. Right now I have something she told
me is "Korean watercress, we eat!" as she stuffed a piece of it in my
mouth. I brought it home though it most certainly is not any kind of
watercress or garden cress I've seen anywhere. It is vaiegated red white &
green, with deeply cut leaves, beautiful little groundcover. But I can
find no listing for "Korean watercress" & no photos of any bog cresses
that even slightly resemble it. As I like to know the names of everything
I have, this is a bit frustrating, but I enjoy that nursery a great deal &
have many nice things from her despite that little or no information comes
with them. Many a time I load up a cart & she tosses on one or two extra
things for free, which a lot of independent nursery owners will do when
they know you a while, but Lowes & Home Depot acts like you just asked to
steal them blind even for asking for permission to salvage bits of broken
bricks they put out back in the trash.

An added problem is the chain stores sell bulbs stripped from the wild. I
have a growing collection of cyclamens for instance, mostly nursery-grown
through Ashland Nursery & Heronswood. But some while ago I obtained tubors
from one of the chains, before I knew these are frequently wild-gathered &
the trade in them harms natural populations. And often mislabeled besides
since the hasty collectors can't tell them apart. Plus the tubors are so
stressed from being root-shaved & dried out, they really don't produce a
nice clump any sooner than nursery-grown two-year-old seedlings that do
much better much faster.

I do always saunter through the nursery sections of chain stores, & if
something seems really nice I won't overcome my desire to have it just
because it's in a chainstore, but if I know I could get pretty much the
same thing (or an improved cultivar) from a good nursery, I'll hold back.
Once, though, when I decided I wanted a very upright rosemary, I saw the
perfect specimen dirt-cheap at Lowes. I left it there & went to four
nurseries where they had only prostrate or unusual forms, which just
wasn't what I wanted, so I ended up getting it at Lowes after all. I
remember also when mass-produced mahonias arrived en masse in four species
on sale for something like $2 per gallon pot, I got a mess of those for a
dark miserable corner on a steep slope where nothing else would grow, &
they've done dandy; I would never have risked anything expensive on that
slope. So in all I would never orchestrate a boycott. I just think it's
best to support the independent nurseries first & foremost, & if the lousy
level of knowledge at the chain stores is annoying, all the more reason to
go look at better choices from better companies.

-paghat the ratgirl


Tony wrote in message
news:8E67F3DFDDCD7E8E.655309D77E3FB574.7C0E9686A62 ...
I'm frustrated about something and thought I'd vent here a bit, so excuse
me....

Where I live there seem to be 3 types of places where I can buy plants:

--Places like Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. that have "garden centers"
but that isn't the main thing they focus on.
--Mid-size to large commercial nurseries that specialize in plants.
--Small "mom-and-pop" type places.

Of those 3, I'd really prefer to patronize the last two figuring that I'll
get better plants.

BUT, at least in our area the last 2 places are very bad about labelling
their plants well. Meaning, they give you the general name of the plant,
but not the particular name or variety. Generally, places like Lowes,
etc.
actually have tags on their plant that give all the information one could
desire, so why can't the local nurseries? I understand that they often
raise the plants themselves, but I'd think that would make it more
important
for their own sake to track these things better.

Example, earlier today I was looking for a Passion Vine. There are many
different varieties of this plant. One large local nursery had quite a
selection in their greenhouse. This nursery is the premier nursery in
this
area with several locations and friendly, helpful stuff. They had at
least
5 different varieties of what I was looking for. All of them labelled
"Red
Passion Vine." Never mind that several of them had different leaf shapes
and other differences were obvious. They were all grouped together as if
they were the same. A very nice staff lady tried to describe the blooms,
but that's not very helpful and it doesn't account for how obviously
different plants would have the same bloom.

Another local nursery, owned by two very nice people that have sold me
many
very nice plants, had a similar selection of diverse plants all bearing
tags
that simply had their color--no other information.

I WANT to buy from the local nurseries, but I also want to know exactly
what
I'm buying. I wish I had the experience to look at a plant and
immediately
know what variety it is, but I don't--especially if the plant isn't in
bloom. I wish nurseries in my area would do a better job with this.

Tony



--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/