Where Can I Buy That Plant?

April 26th, 2016

One of the “hazards” of being a cutting-edge plant connoisseur (a.k.a. “plant geek”) is that it’s usually not easy to find the plants you want.

It’s often not easy scoring the good stuff.

If you’re lucky, your favorite garden center will be on the ball as much as you are and have a ready supply of your beauties of choice.

But more often than not, the cutting-edge stuff is in slim supply – if it’s available anywhere.

That’s when people like me start getting the dreaded question, “Where can I buy that cool plant you just wrote about?”

The short answer usually is, “I don’t know.”

For one thing, it’s impossible to keep track of plant sellers’ highly variable and fast-changing inventory – especially in spring when everybody is buying at the same time over a matter of several weeks.

Sometimes I find out who plans to carry a particular plant, but that doesn’t do much good because a.) the garden center might not actually get what it ordered, and b.) the plant might be gone by the time you get there – 5 minutes after a faster plant geek bought all dozen of the season’s order.

But there are other good reasons why it’s hard to score the good stuff.

A big part of it is how few plants are available to start with.

Unlike the mass growers who grow the basic year-in and year-out yews, azaleas and junipers for the box stores, it’s a whole lot tougher to deal in the new and cutting-edge arena.

You never know how well a new introduction is going to fare or how much of something to produce before you put it in the catalog.

The decision basically boils down to: Do you keep something new and different under wraps for years until you have more than enough quantity, or do you pull the trigger at the earliest point before somebody else beats you to the punch?

More often than not, plant introducers choose Door No. 2.

Either way, if your plant turns out to be a flop, you’re stuck with a growing range full of plants that nobody wants. Keep in mind that plant geeks are a fairly small crowd, which explains why bullet-proof fothergillas collect dust in the nursery corner while mite-prone dwarf Alberta spruces fly out the door.

But if you hit the marketing jackpot – let’s say through a national magazine article, a Martha mention or a social-media blitz – suddenly every discerning gardener wants the plant.

Unlike manufactured widgets, you can’t just ramp up production, add a third shift, and have enough supply to meet demand in a matter of weeks. Plants – especially trees and shrubs – can take years to go from seed or cutting to that 5-gallon toddler you see at the garden center.

What you, as a grower, end up doing is rationing the limited supply – usually to your biggest and/or best retail customers. Compounding the supply problem is that a particular plant might be grown only by a single grower.

The result is that some garden centers might not be able to get a plant they know their customers want. Or they may end up being able to get a mere handful of pots for the whole season.

So what to do?

I think the best bet is to become a loyal and regular customer of a favorite local garden center.

Then when you start drooling over something you’ve seen or heard about, ask the manager or buyer if they’re going to carry the plant. If so, ask if they’ll put your name on one (or a few) and/or give you a call, text or email when it comes in.

If your favorite place doesn’t already have the plant on order, ask the manager/buyer if he/she can order one for you. Most are willing to do that at no extra charge – especially if you’re a loyal customer.

Besides, a lot of these people are also plant geeks and understand your dilemma.

Actually, a bigger worry is that if the place is only going to be able to get, say, five of those new super-dwarf weeping cryptomerias, all five could be earmarked to the five plant geeks working there. (This is one advantage of working for a garden center, by the way.)

We have a nice selection of full-service independent garden centers in the Harrisburg area, such as Highland Gardens in Lower Allen Twp.; Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses in Monroe Twp.; Stauffers of Kissel Hill in Cumberland, Dauphin and York counties; Black Landscape Center in Lower Allen Twp.; Lurgan Greenhouses near Shippensburg; Long Nursery in Palmyra; Groff’s Plant Farm in Lancaster County, and Warburton Nursery between Hershey and Elizabethtown.

There are more, but that’ll get you started.

If you fail that route, a second option is an online search. You might have a shot at getting a new plant from a mail-order vendor, but keep in mind that these plants are likely to be small plants in bare-root form so as to hold down the cost of shipping a lot of heavy dirt.

These plants also are likely to be comparatively expensive for the size you get – in part the result of sellers factoring in replacement plants since the death rate is higher for small plants that may spend days in transit without the benefit of comforting soil.

On the plus side, though, mail-order sellers tend to have good selection and good guarantees.

You can search by the plant name itself or start with a vendor you trust and scan their catalog for the plants you want.

An invaluable source is Dave’s Garden, which has plant-by-plant listings that include a button for vendors selling each plant but also a Garden Watchdog service that lets gardeners rate the worthiness of mail-order companies.

Garden Watchdog features a list of the 30 highest-rated garden-related companies as well as ratings on more than 7,800 vendors.

If you strike out both locally and online, you’re down to lucking out by encountering someone willing to give you a seed, cutting or division of a specimen they managed to find and grow.

This is why it’s a good idea to make friends with cutting-edge gardeners. Or to apply for a job at the garden center…