Buying plants
Buying plants we wish to grow in our gardens can be easy and at times risky!
There’s nothing more satisfying than visiting a local garden centre or local grower, to search through and look at individual plants you really want to purchase for your garden.
Remembering the rule of ‘right plant, right place’ can sometimes be forgotten when selecting those species of plants and getting ‘carried away’ with your purchases! At least the visual ‘touchy-feely’ really helps in choosing healthy plants to grow on in your own garden.
However, what if you don’t have the ability to visit any garden centres or growers or just don’t have the free time to do this?
There’s a myriad of online suppliers who clammer to get your attention and it’s always difficult to choose one which will deliver to meet your needs when unable to inspect them first.
I’m certainly not here to state who you should or shouldn’t purchase from. Maybe personal recommendations do help and I really think it’s important to look at an individual companies returns policy if plants supplied to you don’t meet the expectations of what was suppose to be delivered. Invariably, suppliers will get it wrong and as long as there’s a satisfactory mechanism to obtain a refund then there’s a least a safety net for you, the customer.
And more so, for gardeners who don’t use the internet, ( yes, some of my customers don’t use the internet) there are gardening magazines, newspapers who will provide sufficient adverts for plant suppliers to still advertise there.
case study
One of my customers wanted to have a regimented row of annual bedding plants with pink flowers in a long raised bed which already had Spring flowering bulbs, a line of established Salix integra ‘Flamingo’ half standard trees (Flamingo Willow) and Buxus balls and pyramids growing neatly in lines along the raised bed.
Knowing already that the 11 metre long raised bed would be susceptible to drying out during periods of dry weather made worse by the line of established Flamingo Willows seeking more water as they grew, I decided to locate a pink flowering annual Pelargonium as they would cope well with drier conditions due to their originality from warmer climes.
And I knew the probability of locating 35 pink flowering Pelargoniums from local garden centres or local growers would take a lot of wasted time, I decided to search on line and discovered a grower through Thompson and Morgan seed and plant supplier who could accommodate this.
Buying ‘garden ready’ plants being delivered towards the end of May gave me confidence that on arrival, although the plants would be small, they would though be ready to plant out without delay knowing that any late frosts would have ended by then