Several years ago, a doper recommended Bluestone Perennials as a great, well-priced place to order perennial plants. I have been ordering from them ever since. Easily 90% of the plants in my flower beds are from them. Their pots were small, but that didn’t matter to anyone willing to wait a year for things to grow.
Now they’ve introduced larger, coir pots and jacked up their prices to match. Instead of $12-15 for a 3-pack of plants, they now want $8-12 apiece. BOO. Not competitive.
At auction. My mother manages to find every landscaping auction in her area. Most lots are much too large to bid on, but if you’re friendly you can typically buy individual plants from whoever wins each particular lot.
Grow your own from seed. You get lots of plants for relatively little cost.
Or look for a good perennial nursery in your region and plan a trip there once a year or so. The biggest one hereabouts offers many perennials for $5 a pot, which beats what you’re quoting for Bluestone by a lot, not even counting shipping costs.
There are a couple of farmers who sell perennials at my local farmer’s market. I used to buy a lot of flowers there when I had my Saturday mornings free. Also, the local health food stores often carry flowers.
I find really cheap perennials on the mark-down shelf at Lowe’s. They’re a little unpredictable–often you have no idea what color flower you’re getting, etc, but it’s kind of fun and I enjoy nursing them back to health and seeing what I have next year.
Home Depot carries good quality plants for a good price. I used to landscape almost completely from Target’s Garden Center, but the garden center in my Target died and now I can’t find herbs in 4" pots for less than $2 anymore.
Even though I preferred the old sizes/prices at Bluestone, I would still probably just watch for the seasonal sales at Bluestone and buy from them. Their plants have a reputation for being very healthy and I think it is important to buy from places that care about growing healthy stock. For example I would never buy hosta from a big box store like Home Depot nowadays since hosta virus X is now a huge problem with hostas. Even though hostas are cheap there, it’s not worth it if a diseased plant ends up spoiling other plants in the garden.
Bluestone also has a reputation for being very generous about replacing plants that die after shipment, which is why I do kind of think they’re still worth paying a little more.
Is there a garden club in your area? I purchased some very nice roses for $2.50 ea. at a garden club sale. They had a decent selection of plants and good prices. As a plus the money they make funds a scholarship. If you join a garden club you may even get plants for free.
White Flower Farms. May be out of your price range, but excellent rep and beautiful plants. Trivia: Started by Jane Grant, one of the co-founders of The New Yorker and, at the time, wife of Harold Ross.
My only concern with buying plants at places like Home Depot (well, add hosta virus to the list, too) is buying shrubs there - I buy cheap plants everywhere, but I buy my shrubs at the greenhouse (usually - I broke my own rule for a fantastic sale this summer). I’ve bought tons of great perennials at Home Depot, WalMart, Canadian Tire, wherever.
Another way to go is not to buy your perennials until late in the season - once they go on serious discount. You’ve still got plenty of time for the plants to take, and once a leggy, rootbound plant gets in the ground, they usually come around in no time. Some plants even prefer a later transplant. You do have to watch that the new transplants don’t get too dry or sunburnt in the heat of summer, though.
Color me as impressed that you can buy decent plants from the internets. I’m going to pass this along to my mom and future MIL, who complain about how the quality has gone down while the price has gone up for plants recently.
Soooo… are any of those carnivorous plants nasty enough to fight off the deer? 'Cuz we got deer issues.
Thanks for all of the suggestions. I have catalogues for a couple of these places (and I’m sure they’ve all got websites). I’ll start a-browsing. I need me some deer-proof groundcovers.
I was just reading some gardening article recently that said something about there not really being any plants that will deter deer. Resorts in the mountains that have deer and sheep eating their plants all winter have mesh around the bottom six feet or so of the shrubs; that seems to be about the only way to deter deer.
ETA: Speaking of mesh, we were about to harvest our first strawberry from our new garden. Guess I was a little late getting the mesh out (I still haven’t - it’s on my “to do” list). :mad:
Deer-proof usually means deer won’t eat it, not that it actively deters them as in, chases them off. Deer-proof = plant tastes bad and/or is very prickly. Deer-deterrent = dog.
Thank you for the hosta virus info, lavenderviolet. I did not know that, and we’ve been kicking around the idea of adding some hostas to a shady corner.
purplehorseshoe, proud owner of a 4-year-old spreading mum in a lovely shade of maroon, purchased for a whopping 50c at a Home Depot discounted-plants table. (To this day I tell that plant: “You’re the best fifty cents I ever spent.”)
Yeah, in truth you can’t even get plants that deer won’t eat, just plants they eat less of. I had deer take a bite out of my foxglove this year. I hope there’s a dead deer somewhere.
