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Reality Gardening Check

© Emily Levitt

Reviews of catalogs only tell a gardener so much, and they generally don't reveal everything. Here's an illustration for your condsideration:

This is a story about a couple of major-league gardeners, and their first Mail Order Shock. I'll call these ladies Parke and Natalie, because... well, those are their real names.

These nice ladies made a weekend trip to South Carolina, to visit the Woodlander's Nursery sale. Woodlander's has great sales, but you have to know exactly what you want (by scientific name) and everything is cash and carry. Natalie and Parke had a grand time, bought lots of good stuff, and then...they asked someone for directions to the Wayside Gardens Nursery, which lists a nearby South Carolina address on its' catalog.

"Are you serious?"

They were indeed.

The laughter which followed confused them. They were afraid they had unknowingly committed a gardening gaffe, or a serious floral faux-pas. Nothing was further from the truth, as they were informed. The 'joke' was simply that ---THERE IS NO Wayside Gardens Nursery!

Wayside Gardens is a fine source for mail ordering, but it functions as a clearing house for lots of small growers rather than as a conventional full-service establilshment. Believe me, Parke and Natalie weren't the first customers to get a chuckle on this one. I would never have realized how Wayside works if they hadn't told me about it! In fact, this information kind of hurt my intellectual feelings. I'd happily ordered from Wayside, for two years, thinking all along that it was a magical place which looked just like the catolog photgraphs.

Oh, well. And then you die.

I honestly don't order that much from catalogs, but I have had the best results from those located in the South, and with plants which like the heat and humidity here--
or at least tolerate these conditions well enough to survive.

Remember that YOUR location is the first rule in selecting plants from any source, and that hardiness zones need to be used in conjuction with heat and humidity zones.

The American Horticultural Society's Heat Zone Map

will give you a more realisitc overview of your zone, so make use of it before you select plants. It takes a minute to download, but is well worth checking out.

There are lots of folks who use the mail as a major source of plant material, generally gardeners who live in areas where nurseries are few and far between, or are among those who want to aquire new introductions quickly. Among the latter are what I refer to as "the fifty-dollar hosta" fans.

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