Meadows Farms nursery (and probably Merrifield Garden Center) have bearded iris in gallon pots for $12 apiece. I almost bought Titan's Glory yesterday but decided I don't really have a good place for more iris. If you plant potted iris now, they will bloom in May. Ordering rhizomes from Schreiner's gives you a MUCH greater selection but they arrive in August and don't bloom the first year. You may see dried out rhizomes in bags at the box stores -- don't buy those, they were dug last summer and are near death.

You can plant them any time if the ground is not frozen. However, long storing is not good for lily bulbs. They get dehydrated and weak.

I found this on Piviones Riviere's website. WHAT IS THE BEST PERIOD TO PLANT ? How do you plant a peony? To obtain the best results in peony cultivation, pay very special attention to the planting process. *Planting bare roots should be done between September and mid-March. *It is better to plant peonies in the autumn so that the root system can grow before the leaves come out. *Planting can be done during the winter period even with frost during the night as long as it disappears during the daytime. *After March, due to the growing of leaves and vegetation, it is not recommended to plant bare root peonies. *If you want to plant later, we offer cultivated plants in containers that you can buy either from our nursery or at the flower shows we go to. *Tip : In case of frost when you receive our plants, place the parcel in a cool area  a cellar or a garage - and open the parcel. The individually packed plants can remain for a month in their packaging without any harm.

Quick answer, buy where you get value for your money. Know what value looks like. IF you decide to buy bare roots, there are three things I think you should look for. 1) are the canes green? It they are black or brown or green with black/brown splotches, KNOW that those canes are dead already and imagine the bush without them. If the canes are coated with a greenish wax, use your fingernail to flake off a bit of the wax and check the color of the canes. Greenish wax makes a lot of canes look ok. 2) have the canes already broken dormancy? Are there leaves at leaf nodes, even if they are dead? Can you see where the dead leaves from earlier this year are fingerpruned off? Are the canes starting to get wrinkled from lack of moisture IN the plant (that was lost when the earlier leaf break happened?) Each leaf axil on a healthy rose cane has three buds. Two are backups. But does the cane look as if either of the two backups will make it? 3) does the bagged up root mass that you can't see have enough roots to support the canes you can see? Two stories. I had Don Juans growing on my porch in Algiers Point, and I wanted to add a fourth one. I found one bagged with really good canes, and I got it home and found that there was a huge bright scar where half the roots had been pulled off in processing. I should have returned it. I didn't. With the same care that had supported the other three, #4 died. I remember that mistake. And how I confused densely packed sawdust for good roots. That lead to my not making a mistake several years later when I saw (insert music) from across a crowded room/nursery a mass of seven of the best looking canes I had ever seen on a body bag rose. Perfection. It was Purple something and it was a climber. And I grabbed the base of the bag, and there was close to nothing there. Not even much sawdust. Maybe one woody root. I knew that that root hadn't supported seven one inch canes in the growing fields. I put it back. And remember it to this day. Ann, putting off going out weeding.