Right now, its not going to be very easy to locate any herb plants, as the growing season is now in full swing, and seedlings are mostly sold out everywhere. It may be prudent to start searching for herb seeds and start your own from seeds early next spring. Things like chives, basil, and dill are easy to grow from seeds, and can be planted directly in soil outdoors, or started in small pots and the transferred. Cilantro is also easy to grow, but to get a continual supply, you would start seeds about 2-3 weeks apart as once they bolt, they will not produce much in the way of useful leaves. Oregano and mint are also something that can remain outdoors all the time. Rosemary is also one that you still may find right now, but planting outdoors it could survive through winter in your area. I didn't plant a single dill seed outsied, and have it everywhere right now. Thats due to the fact that I let all the rest of the seed heads drop where they may. My dill is the mammouth type and most plants are nearly a foot tall already and have lots of dill weed leaves. I figured I would harvest most of the leaves once they strat to send out the flower/seed heads, and then let them come up where they want to next year too. I have some in my compost, 50 feet away from the rest, and even a few in my front lawn, and all these just came up where a seed landed. The nice thing about starting your own plants from seed, is you have a better selection to choose from, and don't have to settle for a puny plant at a nursery or garden shop, that may have been forced grown and would quickly die once you get it home.

Growing trees from seeds is not always a very easy process and sure as heck is not very fast. My experience with the retail world is simply sticking a seed in a small pot of dirt is not gonna cut any ice - folks want something they can SEE, not a maybe promise of something to come.. Bare root seedlings - little baby trees often sold or sometimes given away by the local forest service or DNR - would make a much better impact. But they are not the easiest things to care for before planting, even more so for store sales associates that may not be "plant people". Have you considered partnering with a local independent garden center where you (the store) would supply the customer with a coupon/certificate redeemable for a small potted tree at the nursery. I can think of all sorts of reasons why the nursery/garden center would appreciate being involved, not the least is free publicity, but visitors to nurseries seldom leave with just the "free" plant they came for. Get 'em on site and no telling how much they could spend :-)) Another alternative is that the store customer's patronage goes to support some sort of reforestation or a native area or public tree planting operation like in a park or cemetery or boulevard planting, etc. This could be done as some sort of 'sustainability' celebration or public gathering, maybe even with name tags so customers would know exactly where "their" tree was planted.

Hmmmm. Seems like you have that backwards, lol. 'Trying' a wide variety of plants and THEN determining what does best can mean a lot of wasted time, effort, and money. Since you are obviously still in the experimental stage, you might want to do some market research first. Anyway, that's what I would do. Visit some area growers and see what's happening in their world. You could visit some garden centers, too, and pick some brains about what their customers want. I've never grown a great deal of ANYthing that I wasn't pretty darned sure would do great in my location in the first place. I preferred to have a more personal relationship with suppliers when I was in the nursery biz. I did have bare root cuttings shipped to me via the mail, but always talked to the growers on the phone. Hmmmm, the exception to that rule was when I was ordering plugs and seed from Park Seed Wholesale. No need to talk to anyone for that. We still don't know if you are going to do flowering perennials or woody landscape plants. There are some things that I just wouldn't buy on line, or even without seeing them first. Especially if I was purchasing 1000 woody liners from someone for the first time. There are TONS of nurseries in and around Va. Beach. I wouldn't think you would need to shop on line. You're challenge will be to find something that all of the big guys don't bother with, but consumers are clamering for. ;-)

Huge Amazon fan (esp with Prime free shipping) but actually bought our Panasonic MW from Newegg, another fabulous online retailer. They are mainly focused on technology stuff, but carry an interesting assortment of appliances. They also have great customer svc. Like another poster, the first we ordered had a dent (this is a hazard of online purchasing) but they immediately shipped a replacement and sent out a prepaid shipping return label so we just shoved it back into the box and had UPS pick it up. No hassles. And, at least for a little while longer, no sales tax, which for me is an automatic 8% discount. Heck, I prefer buying online versus getting into the car, fighting traffic, and dealing with brain dead big box salespeople.