Selecting Plants: Will That Plant Grow Here? The Reality of Zo: nursery staff useless

» biogardener - nursery staff useless

I have found nursery staff to be totally useless in advising customers, except for the owners of one nursery whom I know personally. The rest of them only know two words, perennial and annual, but they don't know that a perennial in zone 4 is an annual in zone 2.

I garden in zones 2 and 3, and I depend completely on my own judgment or that of my nursery owner friends in choosing my plants. The labels, even if they do indicate the zone, are rarely reliable. I have saved fellow shoppers a lot of money by telling them not to buy certain nursery stock because it won't survive the first winter. The customers are always happy when I tell them, but I am not too popular with the staff, to put it mildly. They prefer to rip people off.

-- posted by biogardener