trends and fashions, mariannese. At the moment, everything here is 'grow your own' with a sideshow of tropicals, prairie planting and ornamental grasses. A quick look in any bookstore will illuminate where the money is going in gardening - design is god. Not only nurseries, the horticultural trade as a whole is going through one of those reinvention moments. many colleges have downsized, teaching fewer modules in plant husbandry, nursey stock, even basic gardening, in favour of quick, money-spinning design courses. Everyone wants to be a bloody designer (We are....and we have seen some absolute cowboys who know NOTHING about plants). There are less apprenticeships. less facillities and many councils, parks and colleges no longer grow their own plants - they merely buy them in cheaply, two or three times a year, from massive greenhouses in the Netherlands. Therefore, the perceived need for knowledge and experience is receding while the nursey trade is vastly over-capitalised - almost impossible to get a small start-up going now. In the UK, the rose trade has largely been fairly steady although Beales, our foremost old rose grower, was in financial difficulties last year and have been forced to look at new ways to generate revenue (teaching courses, expanding the product range, taking on franchises selling garden structures and so on). However, I cannot help but feel quite optimistic for the longer term since roses have been around for hundreds of years while the same cannot be said about restios, bananas, echinacea and miscanthus and the rest of the fashionable plants. Moreover, in a time of anxiety and fear, people invariably fall back into nostalgia and conservative thinking....and there is nothing so redolent of english gardening as a rose. Individuals, sadly, will fall by the wayside and it may be that, for a time, we are dependent on amateurs and a few larger firms to supply us. However, these plants are out there - they are not going away and if the gardening world seriously addressed the issue of failing sales, they would be forced to engage in some imaginative thinking and address some of the many issues which troublwe people who would grow roses if they did not use so much water, pesticides and fertilisers...a matter of education and breaking down artificial barriers to full understanding. Not only that, breeders are also keen to address these troubling problems such as health and vigour, the way roses are planted within a larger scheme and the general good value of planting long-flowering shrubs - we will see a lot more ground-covering/landscape roses which, to my mind, will be a good thing as I am heartily sick of hebes and lonicera, aucuba and bloody skimmia - our usual municipal plantings. The rose industry is not dead or even slightly ill - it is just changing...and a good thing too.

We really are talking about two different creatures...general garden center vs specialty hosta grower. I agree with most of the comments about general nurseries. Most are boring and uninspiring. I rarely buy much from them, and even less likely to buy a hosta there. General nurseries usually buy in bareroot field grown stock or larger plugs, because growing TC liners to a retail size takes at least one full season. They can make more money growing 2-3 fast crops in a season with their space. And therein lies the issue of price...hostas are a relatively slow crop to produce. The longer it takes to grow a plant, the more it's going to cost. Never mind there is soooo much more cost in producing a plant, than the cost of the plant itself. Then factor in the hours spent hybridizing, collecting, cleaning, and growing seeds...and (ideally) years of evaluation...that's a whole lot of time and effort invested in a finished product that the consumer wants to pay less and less for every year. The box store growers make very low margins on large volume. Specialty growers just can not survive doing that. Expecting a specialty grower to conform to mass market prices is guaranteed death for the specialty grower. In the hosta world, it is these small, specialty growers that develop and bring to market the new, cool plants that you all keep saying you want. They need your support...and waiting for the end of the season sale is too late! moccasinlanding, in the past few years Q&Z has been introducing some of Van's plants. I can't say for sure, but I suspect Mark asked if he could put some of Van's plants into TC. From there, Q&Z sells the liners to hosta growers across the country and around the world. As for volume...not sure what an average run was for them...maybe 1000+....maybe much more. I do know some varieties are difficult to produce and were very limited (streakers, for example). Most TC contracts (a plant TCed exclusively for a retail grower) are probably around 200-500 plants. Here again, the larger quantity the lab produces, the cheaper the liners are. Most specialty growers can not sell through so many plants in a reasonable time frame. It seams the general perception the consumer has is that the specialty growers are filling their bank account from crazy margins we charge. Fact is, many growers are barely scraping by. By the way, Tony Avent shared his opinion and condolences on Q&Z in the September Plant Delights newsletter.

I don't know about Princeton Nurseries but that is certainly the case with Hines.......they have been struggling for a number of years, apparently to no avail. Much of that they brought on themselves - over-rapid expansion, a revamping of their business model away from independents and heavily to the box stores, a nearly constant restructuring of their corporate profile (thereby losing a good many longtime, valuable employees) and just a general lack of attention to their customer service. But the local landscape and nursery industry is certainly stressed, both by the weather and economics. Our truly awful spring and summer had a big impact on sales as well as a changing demographic that is moving away from serious hobby gardening to the immediate gratification of "instant" landscaping that requires no or minimal hands-on interaction. And these are the customers that tend to be most impacted by economic swings - very light business activity and no project backlogs seem to the norm for a lot of local landscaping companies. I'd expect to see more smaller companies and mom and pop independent nurseries bite the dust in the coming year. Sales of gardening products (both plants, materials and accessories) are on a declining trend.

I know allot of you enjoy shopping online, but I much prefer being able to see and touch the item before I buy--and I hate to have to pay shipping charges on top of the price of the item! I really do feel bad for the little antique shops, I'm afraid we are going to lose all these cute little places and be left with nothing but BB&B and C&B type stores--nothing wrong with those, but the little antique shops add such a unique flavor to the shopping choices. Nothing like hitting the antique shops for a girl's day out! Luvs