I went to the Home Depot in Granbury Tx I was told they never heard of doing that .The cashier acted as if I was a bother and the garden manager just spoke over his walkie talkie never bothering to speak to me directly although I was looking at him down the isle . At "most" they would take half off but usually they just taped the bag and sold it at reg price . I was very disappointed til I went to Lowe's in the same town . There torn bags are rebagged into a clear bag and sold for $1 ea. I now shop at Lowe's

To answer your HD questions and concerns. First of all each HD has a manager that runs his/her store as they see fit. Therefore I can only speak for "our" store. Each associate is trained for their individual department. I work as a garden associate and we have 16 hours of horticulture certification and another 8 hours of nursery consultant certification. Yes, we do know the answers to your questions and more. Cashiers are just that and people that load stuff for you do not. Don't expect them to be knowledgeable about such things. Our Garden dept manager IS a master gardener. Our plants are NOT owned by HD and are brought in by vendors. Vendors WANT and LOVE a chance to put their plants on HD shelves to sell because they make more money by doing so in the hundreds of HD stores than they would selling themselves. Their merchandise is what we call pay by scan which means if it's not sold it is no loss to HD and if it is then the profit is shared. So of like consignment selling. This is just business folks, the way it is. Therefore HD cannot mark down plants that do not belong to them so don't ask for the half dead plants that are being thrown away. It's not our choice but the vendors choice to throw them out. Possible reasoning is it cost to much to them to ship them back, they could be weaker and have diseased. The HD as does the vendor does not want unhealthy plants on the shelves. It's not a good reflection on either. Our vendors DO MARK down some plants at their descretion. The vendors have people hired that come in and display their plants and put them out on the racks. They are called display merchandisers. HD for the summer has hired outside help to water plants. It is their only job. We tried having associates water and found that these plants in the South need watering twice a day and as big as our nursery is is a 8 hour job for one person which left our customers lacking on our attention. We do put our customers first. It is so important to us we have what is called the VOC. On your HD receipt you'll find a web link to go to that questions your service at our store. When our associates have made you happy and you tell us that, the associate receives an award. So, yes, we strive to put that smile on your face. While at times we may be understaffed please understand it's summer and over 100 degrees on days that we are trying to keep the nursery going, loading pave stones, pine straw and answer questions. HD has a great return policy on plants. We've taken back plants that have obviously been neglected by the customer with no questions and replaced those plants. I've watched people buy plants for centerpieces at parties only to return them for a refund when their party was over. It's easy to place blame when you don't understand the inner workings of a business and all that goes on. Most of the time we don't even have a say so on what plants come to us from our vendors. The vendors themselves send what they think will sell. If you have questions or concerns I'd be glad to answer any way that I can.

maybe i can help clear up some confusion here ive worked in the nusresry industry for 10 years now and i am a buyer for one of these types of chain stores, orchard supply hardware. truthfully, home depot, lowes, walmart, taget, all of these we all buy from similar if not the same sources as each other. now independent nurseries and garden centers, buy from the same growers as we buy from with one major difference, some do actually grom their own material to sell at a slightly higher profit. most chain garden centers are focused on one thing and that is turning the product so sitting on it and waiting for it to grow doesnt make good business sense especially when their space is entirely taken up for merchandise. alot of independent nurseries get their plants already grown and ready to go to the consumer, just like i buy them, the quality is the same because they come from the same grower, the same crop. the biggest difference in what the plant quality looks like is when the consumer goes to shop for the product. alot of times you go into a chain store and the plants are wilting the soil in the pot is dry and theres no clerk to be found or none that are knowledgeable. the key is to shop around, find that one place that caters to your needs and has the product selection and the quality you like, remember the plants when they come off the delivery truck are virtually the same its the finished product that counts look for a place that hass a friendly and knowledgeable sales staff and that keeps a clean and neat place to shop, one clue is to look at the way the employees are working, are they putting plants away or hanging out with other employees when much of the plants in the nursery are obviously dying from a lack of water? these are the places you should stter clear of. the places that do the right thing in these circumstances and that focus on making an enjoyable shopping experience for the consumer are the ones you should goto. price is definately a concern. most chain stores now do price matching so ask. so to answer the question. yeah go ahead and give home depot a shot if the satisfy your needs. go for it.

Thank you for the very many helpful comments so far. Since we've not gone down this road before, it's great to get an idea of other's experiences and what a reasonable starting point will be. I don't mind the couple of comments about our budget being insufficient: I am trying to determine what does or doesn't fit in that budget. So pushback is good. If too little fits in it, then maybe we need to table the project for a few months or year until we have some additional cash on the table. We have one quote, that is in line with the previous comment. The GC we talked to didn't seem phased by our budget (and we cited a smaller number back then, as we've saved more in the intervening months). However, when he drew up recommendations, the number *did* come in higher. The plumbing, electrical, and ceiling work were estimated at about 2500 each. The estimate for cabinets, counters, modifying the drywall, etc was about 21,500. So, $28,500 was the quote for all the essential stuff. This left me puzzling over the following problem: wait, save, and come back with more than $28,500 (the 10,000 mentioned would probably be ideal), or try to figure out if we could scale the concept back to bring that figure at least somewhat closer to budget. Our next step may be to play with the Ikea planner. Perhaps what I can do from there is check with one of the big boxes or else (this might be smarter) just get cabinet quotes from a vendor, and then pay one of the contractors who works our neighborhood and knows rowhouses to help us evaluate the cost of everything else. That way we'll know what we can aim at and how close we are. Thanks again, this is all very helpful.