Has anyone had experience with Hostas Direct? I'm waiting on an order from them, and after some of the posts I've read, I'll be looking at my shipment with a critical eye. There are 3 features of their website that swayed me to buy their products: 1. Many Hostas are available in 3 different sizes - starter (rooted tissue culture starts), advanced starter (about 2X bigger) and mature division - so you can get a small Hosta for a small price, or a larger Hosta for a reasonable price. 2. They have several cultivars for less than $5, and they are not always the smaller sizes for that price - sometimes you can get a mature division. 3. After placing a $50 order, I got a free Hosta of my choosing (from a list). I chose 'Stained Glass', which is a newer Hosta. They were swift in sending me an order confirmation with an invoice number, which not all online nurseries do. I also like their website. When you are looking through their selections, you can sort by name, price, rating, bestsellers, etc. And you can search by color, 1st letter of the name, sun-resistant, slug-resistant, AHS rating, etc. They give detailed information about each Hosta, listing everything from leaf color to leaf size, number of vein pairs, lineage, plant size, etc. You can do a side-by-side comparison of Hostas. They have a shopping cart and a wish list. My wish list is full of Hostas that I intend to buy next month, in $50 increments. So far, I am really impressed, but like I said, I am still waiting for the plants to arrive. I would appreciate anyone's input on their experience with this company. bejoy2

That is great that you want to start up a new peony business but realistically what you need to do is get over any 'romanticized ideas' you might have about doing this. In order to succeed there will probably be a good amount of blood sweat and tears involved. ANY work day after day, day in and day out is called a job for a reason! There are established peony/daylily nurseries already in business so what will set yours apart from the existing nurseries? Ask yourself why would gardeners want to buy from you - are you offering new, old, tree, Itoh, species or all kinds of peony? Or do you really just want to work with the plants because you love them so much? I am not trying to discourage you here, just attempting to be realistic. Unless you have steady income coming in from another avenue I kind of have a hard time believing that anyone can make much of a profit initially or even in the first five years or so - it takes time to grow a plant business - pun intended! So where should you begin? If I were you I would take a look at the peony farms in existence. Since you are willing to travel, go visit Wild and Son, etc., to see what works. When I was visiting the Hawaiian Islands a few years ago for a friends wedding, The bride and groom ordered flowers from a local florist there, and when I told the woman that owned the floral shop that I was a horticulturalist, she BEGGED me to send her boxes of cut flower peonies because there is a huge demand for them there and they get a PREMIUM for them. Here on the farm I have about 15 different varieties of Peonies that were originally my great and great - great grandmothers - I use them for cuts that I sell at a farmer's market in the city where I always sell out. White is popular for wedding use, although I prefer the deeper colored varieties. In order to do well in the hort industry you have to have high standards of quality, an endless supply of energy and a stainless - steel hinge for your spine (because of all the bending over) would help a lot too! I sincerely wish you the best, good luck to you, and I hope to see a new Maryland peony nursery in the near future! This post was edited by jebfarm on Thu, Mar 20, 14 at 10:11

Marlene, you've going to love it. If you have to move to a new zone and be a 'newbie', it's going to be a helluva lot more easier to go to zone 9 from 5 than to do it like I did, which was the reverse. (Here I'm a total idiot and learning the hard way.) You're going to have a much bigger selection of flowers/plants in that zone than where you're from. You will find that some plants that you considered 'annuals' aren't really over there because the fall/winter doesn't get cold enough to kill them. You will find that certain plants that other parts of the US consider more 'exotic', arent' considered that there. Like here, if I want night blooming Jasmine, I have to buy a 40 dollar plant from a nursery and keep it indoors in the winter. There? I can get one for 7 bucks at Target or in the racks in front of Payless and it's a perennial. It will grow like a weed. If you do Bougenvilla, do it in a very bright exposure. If you plant it in the right place, it will be amazingly beautiful and will grow like a weed. If you do it and it takes off, buy yourself a chain saw. I'm not kidding. Those suckers have thorns and over time, the branches can get thick. Walnut Creek has very hot summer periods. No humidity. No bugs. And not much (if any) rain. That part of the Bay Area (East Bay on the other side of the Oakland Hills) also is far more likely to be concerned with water usage. I've been out of the area for about a year and a half, so I don't know what the deal is right now, but I do know that you're given a basic allotment and if you exceed it, you will have one helluva water bill. So take it slowly with big planting for a few months until you find out what that bill is. At the very least, call and find out the parameters for your location so that you don't get surprises. Oftentimes, water usage for a certain year is based upon the previous year. So if the person that owned your house last year wasn't a big gardener, be extra skippy careful. Using mulch is not optional. It helps to keep the plants from being stressed from the heat and holds water. Containers in the summer will have to be hand watered daily. (Mulch them too.) And even if you have sprinklers, you might be doing that in other areas too. There will be plants that require cold that you won't be able to grow. Peonies don't exist. Lilacs only bloom in certain microclimates. A good book to start with is Sunset's Western Garden Book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0376038519/102-5973663-2617723?v=glance&n=283155 Winters are very different. You don't do things like blowing out your sprinklers. You don't say goodbye to your lawn mower. And depending upon the weather, you may have to water year around. You may see trees at the end of winter that drop most of their leaves just as the spring buds form. Spring comes much earlier. You'll be pruning roses at the end of January. Gardening is not something that you stop doing, you just slow down. Long rainy periods mean that you don't have to mow! LOL You don't have big fungal problems with lawns over there, but you might trade that for things like rust on the roses during excessively rainy years. And during that time, plan on buying ant stakes. When the weather is really wet (and it hasn't been for awhile), the ants like to come inside. But compared to Japanese beetles and God knows what else the Midwest has, it's a breeze in comparison. Btw, for entertainment purposes, if you're into produce, check out the Berkeley Bowl (a grocery store, obviously in Berkeley). Their meat is not fabulous, but damn, the produce section is to die for! Especially in spring. Andronico's is good too, but it's more expensive... Have fun! I'll shut up now, I'm getting homesick. You're going to do fine!

Welcome to : http://www.peonysupply.com Business Scope 1. Tree peony (young plant) (1) 2~3 year old root and stem with 2~3 branches Always the root will be washed clear with water, then disinfected, drying the water in the skin and then packed in the polybag, which can avoid the goods dried out. (2) Delivery time will be since September each year till January next year. (3) CFR Rotterdam price and sizes(Red, Pink and White) *2~3 years 2~3 branches packed in Carton 40x43x60cm/100plants App.g.w.20kgs; 30000plnt/20ctnr and 55000plnt/40'cntr; *2~3 years 3~4 branches packed in Carton 40x43x60cm/100plnts App.g.w.25kgs; 30000plnts/20ctnr and 55000plnts/40'cntr; *3~4 years 5~6 branches packed in Carton 40x43x60cm/50plnts App.g.w.30kgs; 15000plnts/20ctnr and 30000plnts/40'cntr. 2. Tree and Herbaceous peony fresh cut flower(white, red, pink, purple, green,...) (1) Length: about45~50cm Here is a link that might be useful: best tree peony supplier from China