I have always shopped online for things like health products, clothes, furniture, books/CDs etc, even when living in central London, so living somewhere more rural hasn’t really changed my shopping habits. As I don’t drive I can’t really get to garden centres or nurseries easily, and it occurred to me recently that I didn’t really have a clue which are the best nurseries for shopping for plants online. So I’ve decided to order from different nurseries each time and conduct my own research. Preferring to keep things simple, I would rather have just a handful of nurseries on my shortlist than to spread my purchases over many different websites. It can often keep postage to a minimum too.
There are so many nurseries out there and I don’t want to be trawling all of their online catalogues, fun as it can be at times. I have also been sadly disappointed in some of them (more on this later) so it can save both time, money and unnecessary emailing back and forth. Working out a criterion for establishing my top ten nurseries, I’m considering the following:
1) Health, size and condition of plant on arrival.
(yes I know sending anything alive and delicate through the post is not ideal, which is why packaging is also a factor)
2) Value for money.
Which is not always the same as the cheapest prices. I would rather pay a bit more for something that is healthier, stronger (hardened off), and larger than newly emerging seedlings (aka plug plants). The whole point of a nursery, to me anyhow, is to supply a plant that is mature and strong enough to survive. I can plant my own seeds if I only want tiny stems and leaves that have just popped their heads out of the compost, and that require much care and nurturing before they will survive in the big outdoors.
Dead, dying and non-existent plug 'plants' from JParkers. Typical condition of most of this large order.
3) Indication of availability of stock.
You would be surprised how many websites I encountered that couldn’t tell me whether they had a particular plant currently in stock. They would sometimes state on the website that if the item was not in stock they would send a substitute, or issue a refund by cheque. Well as my bank is a good hour to travel to by bus I don’t want to be messing around with cheque refunds. What’s wrong with having a website that automatically updates, and says ‘sold out‘ or ‘new delivery expectedby end of May’ ?
I even emailed a nursery once to just confirm they had the plants in stock before I placed my order online, and received an email back from them saying that they can only dispatch what they have available. Er....yes, that’s why I’m emailing in the first place.
4) Ease of use of website. This follows on from the above, as availability info is my main issue with some of them. Being able to search the website for a particular plant is another. I recently ordered a plant from a website and wanted to go back to it and order a few more. Nothing turned up in the search, plus I looked under every single category and it was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t even click on the item in my shopping cart to get back to the page where I'd ordered the first one. Strange.
Lack of photos also irritates me, as well as lack of description and basic info about the plant - it just looks as though they couldn’t be bothered. If they can’t be bothered to say anything more than the price, then I can’t be bothered to order from them. Shopping online IS supposed to be fun y’know.
5) Communication.
Very important to know what is going on with my order if there is a delay or problem, and also not to hold the whole order up if only one thing is out of stock.
When I was ordering from many different websites when I first moved here I remembered that I had ordered a soaker hose and some plants a couple of months previously from a particular nursery and had heard nothing since. On reminding them by email and cancelling the plants that were not as urgent as the soaker hose, I soon after received a hose of a different brand than the one on the website (could have bought that one locally if I’d wanted it) and one of the plants which I’d stated I was now cancelling. The ‘plant’ was just an almost empty pot with a few seedlings, which could well have been weeds for all I knew. It never grew into anything, and the hose had to be returned.
Another problem I had was when ordering roses from a well-known rose nursery. We had unusual levels of snowfall that winter over all the country, and instead of asking customers whether they would like their order dispatched now (knowing full well we couldn’t plant them in the snow), they just made a decision on behalf of us all to post them anyway. I spent many weeks keeping them all alive in buckets of water before they were able to be planted outside, when an email from them could have saved me a whole lot of bother.
So these are the criteria I’ll be using so far, and I want to have a list of nurseries on my blog which I would happily use again. This is mainly for grown plants rather than bulbs or seeds.
It is also useful to do an internet search for the nursery and type in ‘reviews’ after the name, just in case someone has written about it already. I wish I had done that when I had wasted much money by ordering from one nursery which had a huge number of negative reviews already. Unfortunately, some people need to experience it for themselves before they will believe it and are not put off if, for some reason, they were lucky with their order on that occasion. Then later on they join the ranks of the reviewers who are fuming about their lost money at receiving dead plants. They can’t say they were not warned, which makes me wonder whether reviews are of any use at all. Still, I’m doing this for my own use mainly and also welcome any reviews of nurseries whether positive or negative from others in the comments box on this blog. You can also leave a general review about any online mail order nursery in the uk by registering on http://www.growsonyou.com.
I’ll record my latest purchases along with ‘care notes’ for them on my blog at a later date.
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