Irresponsible Nursery Practices - A Rant
joshtx
10 years ago
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10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoPoorbutroserich Susan Nashville
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Rant! My lilacs are SO potbound I've got them soaking in our bath
Comments (11)Well, what's done is done. We did the best we could.... I was pretty upset yesterday. More than anything I felt a breach of trust from the nursery. I mean how can they do that to their loyal customer base? They should be ashamed. Seriously. We never did get even half the soil out of the plants. We let them soak for hours in the bathtub. I thought of adding a tiny drop of dishwashing liquid, but I didn't... So I handed dh the carpet knife and I said here, do it, I can't watch. He said what do you want me to do with this, and I said make 1 inch deep cuts from top to bottom all around. Basically, he thinks we just killed the shrubs... I was able to spread a small amount of roots out. The bottom roots were the easiest. The very tippy top roots were completely cemented and tangled. There was very little I could do... I figure in a few days the shrubs will wither and die. :( I still feel like calling the nursery and asking her how they could do this to their customers, but maybe rootbound pots are the industry "standard" these days.... The real adventure began though after dh got the plants out of the bathtub and brought them outside. Dh let out the plug and came downstairs and we never thought about the bathtub until later. It was plugged. And I mean PLUGGED! Dh had to snake out the drain. He pulled out roots and plant media that was stuck. He had to go into town to get Liquid Plumbr. After the tub was unclogged, he filled the tub with water, then took the unopened bottle of bleach tablets I had just bought that morning for laundry, and he dumped the whole bottle in! I'm going to confess that I did add a tiny bit of Lime to the soil, and I did mix in a bag of garden soil I got from the nursery. It got lost in all our native soil, but it made me feel like we gave a tiny "boost" to the soil. In the end, I decided to add those amendments since I want to make the soil as generous to the Lilacs as I can, especially after what they just experienced yesterday... This post was edited by ilovemytrees on Thu, May 29, 14 at 9:27...See MoreChelsea (rant)
Comments (25)Ulf Nordfjell's garden a Tribute to Linnaeus that won a gold medal in 2007 was transplanted to the Gothenburg Botanical Garden after the show and looks just as good there after four years. But it was a very Swedish garden so the plants came home to their own soil and climate. I had a chuckle over a comment by a British garden columnist that Nordfjell's spruce hedge was a modern feature. It is such a traditional wind break that it went out of fashion here 50 years ago. There is one from 1936 on my block, probably one of the last in existence. Wisley is educational and inspirational but it is not beautiful. The overall design is dull. The elements don't hang together at all. I was surprised that even Penelope Hobhouse's garden there was so uninteresting, as I admire her books. I felt like a German lady on a garden tour I guided for the German Rose Society in the south of Sweden. We visited a large country garden full of roses but her verdict was "Beautiful roses but not a beautiful garden". I don't think design was a major question at Wisley, it has a different purpose. I enjoyed the visit to Wisley and I learnt a lot about staking plants from the long border, not that we need to stake plants much. Our delphiniums are not overfed and we have little wind in summer so generally manage without staking. The trial fields were a revelation and I made notes frantically. That year delphiniums and sweet peas happened to be on trial, two of my favourite plants....See Morea bit of a disappointment, really. (a rant - beware)
Comments (67)I do think this has been a fun discussion to read, and I'm glad that folks have been so gracious in encouraging each other to stick around and continue to express opinions as just that - our individual opinions to share and learn from each other. Melissa raised an excellent point in response to my post that I did indeed state more strongly than I intended. I also don't grow antiques or even roses because I deliberately want to be different from my neighbors in some sort of anti- "keeping up with the Jones" attitude. I am at heart a lazy gardener, which is one reason I refuse to spray, since that makes something fun into unpleasant work in my world. I like old garden rose forms but something that suckers like Gallicas sounds like too much work in a contained space so I look elsewhere. I also like modern rose forms and bright colors and stripes so I grow those too and don't bother to segregate the types except by vague color relationships and zone pocket requirements. Still, there's something special about roses that appeals to my own quest for knowledge and community and history and even individualism, with each rose having its own personality and story, both in my yard and in the rest of the world, that isn't equaled by other types of garden plants. Let me slip in an analogy for where I see some of the challenge and appeal of roses beyond just their beauty, since any number of garden plants are intrinsically beautiful. When I became engaged to my husband, he asked me what kind of wedding ring I'd like. Well, my first considerations were practical (as they are in my garden), and being a klutz, with all the ways I use my hands I didn't want to have gashes in my clothes (and skin) from a solitaire like a majority of rings out there. I also look wretched in gold jewelry, so I wanted white gold, and I like the intricacy of filigree jewelry just because it's pretty. We discovered that by these three practical and aesthetic considerations, we were already beyond 99% of the rings that we could find for sale not because I wanted deliberately to be different, but because what I liked wasn't what apparently most other folks liked. After searching all over two towns, we checked the teeny jewelry store next to my husband's store and wearily said the words that made most store owners shake their heads blankly, "white gold filigree". What a joy to watch the owner pull out a huge tray of estate sale rings in nothing but white gold filigree and tell us the stories behind them. Not just because I liked this style aesthetically, but there's something richer and more powerful about having a ring from the 1920's with an intriguing history behind it. I am very grateful to that jewelry store owner for maintaining and sharing those "weirdo" rings, since I didn't even know what I wanted would be hard to find until long after they were popular (just like my gratitude to folks who maintain hard-to-find roses). It adds something indefinable to the personal sentiment that I would treasure anyway in any wedding ring my husband would have chosen, to imagine who else has loved this ring and been loved through the gift of it. So that individualism and history and sense of community is part of what appeals to me about roses, beyond the fact that I think they're beautiful and surprisingly manageable plants to care for. I love that roses have families on many levels - that I can look at a Kordes rose and see aspects that differ from a Meilland rose, that children and grandchildren of roses like "Peace" or "Souvenir de la Malmaison" share important characteristics, or that rose breeders like Rupert or Barden can be people we actually know (at least virtually on this forum). And one more thing - the same can be said of daylilies, since they are every bit as diverse with a long history of some varieties, and I have probably 40 named varieties in my yard. For me, the difference is the challenge associated with them, hence my earlier response to Suzy's initial comments. I just don't find daylilies that challenging to grow, so they don't develop as much personality or uniqueness for me as the roses do in my yard. That sentiment and this whole post starts getting off on another tangent, and since this thread is getting long I'll start a new one on the idea of what appeals to us about roses. Still, I wanted to respond to Melissa's very thoughtful comments and respect the very welcome challenge of this discussion topic. Have a good time out in the garden Lola, and BlackGavotte, and welcome back whenever you want to chime in here. Cynthia...See MoreRant: Are your knowledge, experience and love of roses worth 15 Euro?
Comments (31)I confess, I am amazed (I frequently am) that apparently so many people are unable, unwilling or incompetent at using the vast trove of information out there, preferring to simply throw money at someone to do it for them. In the UK, there appears to be a flourishing online garden design service where people send a few photos of their space and, bingo, back comes a printed design and plant list while their bank account is several hundred pounds lighter. What sort of service is that? When I was in that game, I would spend days walking about in the design area, prodding at soils, peering at light and shadows, checking the aspects, the building design, placing of windows, doors etc. the clients aspirations, the placing of utilities. More often than not, the client didn't get much more than a sketchy drawing or 2 but at least I knew the place intimately...in a way it is simply not possible to do online...and frankly, never in a million years would I be spending money on an internet expert offering diagnoses from a photo. Nic, I can see this really bothers you so why not contact Houzz. The old GW had many rulings regarding business use and promotions and although it may well be impossible to do anything about it other than refuse to participate (there are charlatans and knaves everywhere), why not take a punt on doing something similar yourself since you do have expertise and experience which always comes across to customers...eventually. Evidently, there seems to be a market out there, filled with lazy people who just want someone else to make the effort on their behalf....See Morejoshtx
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agojoshtx
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoKippy
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10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoplantloverkat north Houston - 9a
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10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoPoorbutroserich Susan Nashville
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10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoBrittie - La Porte, TX 9a
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