animaux wrote:
: On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 07:18:41 -0700, "Dwayne" wrote:

: (...)

:Lowes, Wal Mart Etc. are all fine places to buy your plants. The only
:problem with them is that those located in my town might have plants that
:aren't for my area. I bought Thompson grapes one year and had them planted.
:Then took a pruning class at the university there. At the College I was
:told that Thompson grapes would not survive in that state. They never made
:it to the next summer.

: (...)

: People around here started to demand Lowes and Home Depot and other box stores
: have a Texas native plant table or ten. It took them a year, but they got it
: together and started shopping the local growers. The labels are excellent,
: giving cultural information, plant size at maturity, taxonomic information and
: Heat Zone information (which is key down here).

That's great! Whenever I venture outside of Illinois to visit relatives
in Texas, I'm always struck by the fact that's it's like a whole other
botany ;-)

One of the problems with large chains is that they don't pay enough
attention to what grows well locally and tend to sell a generic selection
of plants for a give zone.

There's a move here, too, towards offering more of our tallgrass prairie
native forbs and grasses, most of which are much better-suited than
furriners to the alternating deluges and droughts of our tropically hot
summers, our high winds, and our freeze/thaw, sometimes Arctic, winters
without reliable snow cover.

Cheers!

-- Karen

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