We want better plants by post for gardeners

In April I ordered plants via a newspaper offer, delivery to be “by the end of May”. Now, at the end of June, the plants have not arrived and I am told delivery is now expected at the end of July. As these are basically bedding plants I will have lost most of the season so I cancelled the order. I am now shocked to discover that the company had taken money from my credit card in April on the day I placed the order – I queried this and was told it was common practice. Surely, with the uncertainties associated with the production of plants, they should wait until they know they are able to supply before taking customers money.

I bought £187-worth of miniature dianthus, in two separate lots, from Allwoods, mail order to France. The plants were excellent, no complaint about that, but it became apparent as they grew on that the second lot was not the variety I had ordered. They finally admitted this and said “they could only apologise”. As the plants were for a continuous matched border the second variety was useless to me. I have heard nothing since I pointed this out!

I bought 6 sugana raspberry canes from Suttons online ,when they arrived they were in pots I watered them and planted them into compost enriced soil after about a week the leaves on 1 started to go brown rang Sutton told lack of potash within 2 months all gone brown and after sending photos and ringing on numerous occasions still having trouble with Suttons customer services still awaiting e-mail link to send more photos,would not recommend Suttons at all to anyone

I buy loads of plants online and I must say I have not yet had a bad experience. It gives me the opportunity to pick up good value plug plants that I can grow on myself as well as special plants I have read about but which are not stocked locally. I live in coastal Suffolk, which is quite far from everywhere really, and the cost of fuel makes it prohibitive to go driving around nurseries searching for the plants I want. Plants these days are really carefully packed and healthy specimens. I do go to nurseries too, generally not a fan of Garden Centres, but online is my favourite method of plant shopping. One click gives me more time to spend in my garden.

I think I have the proverbial ‘green fingers’, my plants very rarely die and most of them thrive way beyond expectation. But I have never ever had any luck with plants purchased by mail order. They always die within 4 weeks.

The first time I used an online plant website I ordered from Garden Express. The plants were absolutely fantastic though a bit expensive. This gave me the courage to order more plants from different nurseries….4 times. Once, the plants came diseased and had slugs in the bottom of the containers. The second time, the plants were already wilting and in distress. No matter what I did…none of them survived. The third time, I ordered thirty 9am potted perennial geraniums from Plants for Shade. This was for a communal planting scheme and all they did was inserted plug plants into 9cm pots and shipped them. It only became apparent that they were plug plants when we came to plant them out and all the soil around them started falling apart. This was a bit embarrassing as the homeowners had contributed around 150.00 for the plants. I did get some really good slow growing buxus plants through a nursery from the Netherlands via Amazon.

I too have just spent the last half hour trying to find the results of the best and worst mail order I know David Austin is god! But would really like to See the whole list which apparently is in the July edition of the gardening mag. But how to access it ??

Re my post above I remember seeing a comment that Nicky’s Seeds had a Which endorsement for good germination , there seem to be a few web sites using variations of that name , which one was recommended please?