@stanofh how large were those plants? The plants I was ordering were in 5 gallon containers and mature.

Mostly gallon plants. Echiums get pot bound very fast. I stuck one in the ground that was suffering potted, in the vacant lot next to me..and after the first few months of watering,I never watered it again and it grew fast and large.

They both grow very quickly.

Very strange. I saw scads of blue Echiums in the Bay Area and would have assumed they were even more common there than LA.

They pretty much are. Have you also tried the Dry Garden in Oakland? He always has those Lion Tails..the Echiums might be hit and miss..they are more commonly found at HD and Orchard Supply,etc.

@stanofh I gave in an purchased a local 1 gallon lion's tail. I will keep looking for Pride of Madeira.

The reason I wanted the plants I found down south is he had lots of large specimens of both plants and I wanted the larger plants.

They DO grow........and pretty rapidly at that :-) If given the choice, I almost always opt for a smaller plant initially rather than one more mature. Easier to plant and they are faster to establish and typically without transplant shock.

Do any of you know where to find a mail order Echium Callithyrsum “Gran Canary Borage”? This Echium forms a large hedge, up to five feet high. It is apparently extremely rare to find in cultivation.

You'll probably have to find seed for that one.

Annie's Annuals and Perrenials sells E.c. 'Gran Canary Borage'. Yes they are small, but Echiums do take off once established.

@gyr_falcon No, Annie's search engine result page marks the Borage as "Information Only". In addition, the product page is marked "Not in Production".

Sorry, I was mistaken. I missed the Not in Production note on the right. I haven't ordered there for a while, and thought it used to be in a different area on the page.

@gyr_falcon the worst offender for these kinds of "phantom products" is Home Depot. They put things on the Internet that no store can order, and what is even worse is Home Depot's own customer service system cannot see those items. Case in point is here. Search Google for "orchid bark seedling" and that Home Depot product is the number one search result. Call Home Depot and Good Luck. :)

I'm not a fan of the HD system, but I don't necessarily believe this falls into the same category. I know some nurseries keep the information pages available, even though they are not offering the plant any longer, as an informational resource. Annie's has some uncommon plants, and I have used the site just for the information. One of my favorites is San Marcos Growers, a wholesale nursery, because they include info that is not widely known, and relates to growing the plants in my area. If the nurseries were to pull all of the information on plants they weren't currently offering, it would be a significant loss.

@gyr_falcon I can agree with that, although it is very frustrating when a nursery implies that it will stock the plant again and then doesn't publish any kind of schedule of when the plant might be available.

It can be difficult when specific plants are on one's wish list. I've had to be years patient with some--others are still waiting to be found.

Nurseries cannot always give schedules, because they may not know. Specific plants go in and out of favor all the time, so what they grow often follows trends. For example, just recently, variegated flax lilies (Danella) have shown up in city median strips--and all of the recent 4" pots of that plant are no longer offered as the nurseries move them on to try to meet demand. And the plants that have fallen out of favor for those strips, might yield their nursery space and become difficult to find. Sometimes just a magazine or tv show touting a plant, or a graduating class of architects that become enamored with an old favorite, can cause it to become popular and shift what is grown.

The San Marcos website is invaluable. I reference it constantly. The Monterey Bay and Plantzafrica sites are also very helpful.

My Leonotis in a 4" pot on Dec 1 is armpit tall and blooming on April 1.

Trends, yes. Try to find 'Platinum Beauty' Lomandra. Last year Agave 'Blue Glow' was unobtainium, though the supply is plentiful this year.

I really like Monterey Bay's stock. They grow a lot of the less common plants, often offered in the smaller 4"-1 gal. containers and the quality is excellent. I bought a 1 gal. variegated Arbutus last week. It isn't as if I actually have room for it in the garden though! And yes, their site is pretty informative, too.

@gyr_falcon If this is the Monterey Bay you are referring to, I guess they don't have photos of anything they sell? I'm referring to their catalog, not their promotions.

If you click on the links right after the plant names (close up, flowers, etc.) those are the photos.

@gyr_falcon I have respect for them looking at just their Adeniums alone. They are wholesale. Will they allow foot traffic without presenting a business license? That would be a fun day trip.

I do see that you can click through to find beautiful photos of each plant. But that's terrible marketing. No one is going to sit there and click on 100 plants to see 100 photos. They need a catalog with photos that can be browsed across all plants from a single page.

Those who generally purchase from wholesale growers do not need a pictorial catalog.....they know what they are purchasing!! In fact, I don't know of many wholesale growers with a pictorial catalog/availability listing........Iseli and Monrovia are two of the very few. And both of theirs are online.

What gardengal said; wholesale generally does not have as great a need for photos, newly introduced plants excepted.

I haven't purchased from Monterey Bay's wholesale end, because we got out of the retail nursery business long ago, and most of our landscape work was for resorts in other areas of the country. I was referring to my purchasing their plants sold at retail nurseries for my own use.

I don't know about Monterey Bay's access policies, but their site states wholesale only (usually that is a "No"). Some wholesale nurseries will sell direct to the public, others do not. Many are not set up in a manner similar to retail nurseries--there may not be identification labels, prices, coherent groupings (shrubs, trees, perennials may be all over the nursery, rather than grouped) or anyone to assist or answer questions. Some require minimum purchases in the $500 and up range.

If you know a wholesale nursery that has something you want, often it is better to ask a retail nursery that carries their stock if they can order it for you. Some charge for that service, others waive fees if your order is of a certain size, etc.

ETA: Even those purchasing wholesale do not tend to have the run of the nursery. Orders are placed, and the nursery chooses and pulls the stock for you. There are exceptions for large specimen trees, and somethings like that. But generally, if you are picking up rather than having stock delivered to a site, when you arrive at the nursery, your items are in a group to load.

If you are a wholesaler with 20 plants, I agree with both of you. If you are a wholesaler that is trying to support a catalog of 1000 plants, I disagree on photos. 90% of your customer base will know very little about probably 50% of your plants. Good photos are your opportunity to sell.

" 1000 plants, I disagree on photos. 90% of your customer base will know very little about probably 50% of your plants."

BUT most wholesalers don't have that many selections; only the specialized prestige ones like San Marcos Growers, Iseli, Buchholz, Skagit, Briggs etc.

The 'system' we have in this country, as I've noted before, is arcane and probably ultimately unnecessary, but it is [what it is[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/wholesale-nurseries-dsvw-vd~1699450), and we seem [stuck with it[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/why-wont-a-wholesale-nursery-sell-a-single-specimen-to-me-dsvw-vd~1718639). When I google very rare plants, and stumble upon the various nurseries, pepinieres, and baumschules of western Europe, one comes away with the clear impression it's not as common as system there. For example, the Hachmann Rhododendron nursery, by far the biggest in the world for those types of plants, will sell retail. More 'primary producers' of plant material in Europe, sell to general public. I don't mind wholesalers that are just producing crap to stick in front of McMansions and strip mall Starbucks sticking to their policies - those policies are part of their overall 'business model'; OTOH it is kind of unfortunate Buchholz or San Marcos won't do on-site "counter sales" to retail customers, as almost any other specialized industrial producer/distributor of anything will do these days, besides research chemicals. Companies that had strict 'business credentials only' policies, like Grainger, are dying. Because guess what, even your 'business credentialed' customers might just find it easier to buy something on ebay or amazon where joe schmoes can purchase too.

90% of your customer base will know very little about probably 50% of your plants

I have no idea where you acquired that impression, but it sure made me laugh!

@gyr_falcon I acquired that impression from 30+ landscapers I have interviewed over the last 10 years, 90% of whom knew very little about plants. The barriers to entry in the gardening and landscaping business are zero. Anyone can claim to be a gardener, with zero formal training, and very little aptitude. I'm not referring to nursery owners. I'm referring to people in the trade who "design" gardens and then buy the plants wholesale. Most wholesale nurseries in our area sell to anyone in the trade.

As an ex-marketing guy, it is pretty obvious to me why a good website and web catalog needs good photos. That is not a point that escapes the larger commercial wholesale nurseries like San Marcos Growers. The smaller nurseries online do not appear to be suffering from a similar talent for marketing. You find that funny. I find that sad. Because those are hard working people who know a lot about plants, but they lack the basic skills required to sell products and to grow a business through marketing.

Naw, if you are ordering from a wholesaler you know what you want. I won't waste my time with an online catalog. I download the availability list spreadsheet, typically as a PDF, and make an order spreadsheet that I send in to my rep. One of the wholesalers I use has an availability list that is a couple hundred pages long. The smaller wholesalers are generally acting as contract growers for the larger wholesalers. Then they might have a specialty angle but the bulk of their business is with other growers.

But how will encouraging the non-professionals, that have little understanding of the plants in the photos, to purchased based upon pretty photos, improve anything? When they plant, and stock dies, they have to replace. That is money out of their pocket. The less they know about the plants, the more they will have to replace due to that lack of knowledge resulting from loss of stock. There is a reason many of those non-pro companies stick to tough plants that have stood the test of time.

If all nurseries push stock using photos over knowledge, then yes, they would grow their business through marketing. However, it would come at the expense of loss for the landscaper, and possibly the landscaper's dissatisfaction towards the nursery because the plants died, while not understanding their own hand in the loss.

Those guys that know nothing basically just order bomb proof parking lot plants they can water the crap out of and walk away.

The vast majority of purchasers from the wholesale nurseries/growers are buyers for retail nursery sales - that is the 90% of the wholesale growers customer base!! They have priority over just about any other sort of customer. And just like Nil13 stated, they order off an availability list - no pictures ever, just a list of plants and sizes and wholesale prices. They know their plants just as well as the growers do - photos are unnecessary. And they buy by the truckload so quantities are large, hence the preference given to these types of businesses. And sometimes, especially with trees and larger B&B shrubs, they have to order months in advance of the sales season. What has come into my local nursery over the last few weeks was mostly ordered last fall. It is only the smaller, quick crop turnover plants that are ordered on a weekly basis.

FWIW, few of these larger wholesalers cater to landscapers either. Even some of the smaller ones in my area require a retail nursery license to purchase plants. I know this because I had to get a retail nursery license in order to source plants wholesale for my design clients, even though it is not something I do routinely. I was also a nursery buyer myself for many years and sales rep for a wholesale grower for a few more - I know the wholesale end of the industry pretty darn well!!

As to growing their business through "better marketing".........that is also pretty much unnecessary. Most can barely keep up with demand as it is. If we didn't preorder plants well in advance of the primary sales season, we wouldn't have many to sell.......a lot would already be sold out (to other large retailers) and we would be forced to wait until a new crop was available. I've got that problem with a few things rght now, and nothing very exotic either!! For some reason, 'Frans Fontaine' hornbeams are in very short supply!!

"Most can barely keep up with demand as it is."

Now that the housing crash has fully recovered and in fact might have entered the bubble phase again, in the great American cycle of advanced finance.

"For some reason, 'Frans Fontaine' hornbeams are in very short supply!!"

Exactly the sort of plant that 'landscape architects' spec for expensive, 'high prestige' projects. (i.e., rich client with more money they he/she knows what to do with!) No Joe and Jane Q. Public visiting a nursery would EVER pick on of those out based one its merits. Or it would happen very rarely. Thus, refer to my other posts about how the entire US nursery industry, or the main chunk of it anyhow, is based on a complex interplay of booming residential and commercial real estate, landscape architects who get a cut of how many plants they install in a landscape (hence the trend of ridiculously over-done 'foundation' plantings) and advanced marketing techniques. There aren't miles and miles of exurbs in Europe or the UK, filling with McMansions and brand spanking new strip malls, needing an infinite supply of Frans Fontaine Hornbeams grown by an infinite supply of hole digging monkeys (who then type Shakespeare's play at night! ...if I may way over-extend an analogy). Hence the reason wholesalers exist in Europe but don't dominate the supply chain as they do here. I remember the day I visited a certain west coast nursery, a UPS truck had just dropped off a pallet load of perennial liners from Skagit Gardens, a big wholesaler. Many customers would probably assume this mail order nursery produces their own plants. But notice how the same plants often crop up at the same time at most of the major PNW mail order houses? Do they just decide to grow the same plants in the same year by accident? Nope, LOL. OTOH, I know a mail order nursery owner in the UK who told me he has never, ever bought anything he sells from a wholesaler.

@davidrt28 we are similarly cynical and I share most of your points of view. This is what appalls me about the landscaping business: there is effectively no service provider working as a "fine gardener" for common households. In the US, the way the market breaks down is as follows:

* In the US, "gardeners" has sadly come to mean a person who - weekly or bi-weekly - descends on a house to use a lawn blower and take away dead leaves and butcher some plants. They won't understand anything about soil. They probably won't even attempt to fertilize or mulch, and if they do it is probably all wrong. They know nothing about plants. They have lots of bad design ideas. They can't even do simple hardscape projects correctly.

* "Landscape designers" has sadly come to mean a person who wants to do a $10K to $30K paver project with some cookie-cutter plants thrown into the design. Not every landscaper wants to do hardscape projects, but they all seem to want to do large projects, and none of them really fills the role of a knowledgeable gardener.

There does not appear to be anything in between these two things. If I am a person who loves gardens and loves plants, I have no one I can go to who will just come once or twice a month and actually take care of my plants, do proactive things to improve irrigation, fertilization, pest control, design, etc. I guess these things are now done by "fine gardeners" but I am discovering there are only a handful of these people, and they are all working on the Larry Ellison (Oracle Founder) estate. The average household that wants to buy four hours of this person's time every month has nowhere to go and nothing to buy.

So, if you love plants and gardens, you end up having to learn how to do all these things yourself. Because everyone else is going to either butcher your garden by ignoring it or butcher your garden by proposing to wipe it out and replace it with $20K of concrete. It's beyond frustrating.

There are definitely garden designers out there that are not just hardscaping people with cookie cutter plantings. I have decade old relationships with clients as their tastes and gardens evolved. I was just at a panel discussion at the Huntington where one of the speakers showed a landscape that he had worked on for 15 years and unfortunately would not be working g on in the future because it sold. The problem is that most of the potential clients are freakin Philistines and just want a mow and go landscape and because of that most installers just do that.

The aftermath of 2008 was insane down here. The wholesalers were cranking out material and every inch of their properties were packed to the gills. From SoCal there were semis going to Vegas daily. It was nuts. Then in what seemed like a blink of the eye, everything was over grown and then trashed. There were a couple of gnarly years where the grower's yards looked like ghost towns. The specialists really got conservative after that.

To be honest, the sources of the best gardening advice, including resources for best nurseries, landscape supply, gardeners, etc, are your local gardening societies. Even if you encounter a new garden designer that doesn't know much in that environment, at least you know they want to learn.

"For some reason, 'Frans Fontaine' hornbeams are in very short supply!!"

Exactly the sort of plant that 'landscape architects' spec for expensive, 'high prestige' projects. (i.e., rich client with more money they he/she knows what to do with!) No Joe and Jane Q. Public visiting a nursery would EVER pick on of those out based one its merits. Or it would happen very rarely."

• Sorry but I heartily disagree with this assessment. Fastigiate European hornbeams are widely used in my area - they are even an approved Seattle street tree. 'Frans Fontaine' is a just a somewhat more uniformly narrow cultivar. Not by any means a unique or pricey item, almost trouble free and most certainly not restricted "expensive, high prestige" landscaping projects. Few of my clients or projects qualify under this description and I've been using them routinely in my designs for more than 20 years. In fact, their popularity in recent years is very likely the reason for their current lack of availability.

• "In the US, "gardeners" has sadly come to mean a person who - weekly or bi-weekly - descends on a house to use a lawn blower and take away dead leaves and butcher some plants. They won't understand anything about soil. They probably won't even attempt to fertilize or mulch, and if they do it is probably all wrong. They know nothing about plants. They have lots of bad design ideas. They can't even do simple hardscape projects correctly.

  * "Landscape designers" has sadly come to mean a person who wants to do a $10K to $30K paver project with some cookie-cutter plants thrown into the design. Not every landscaper wants to do hardscape projects, but they all seem to want to do large projects, and none of them really fills the role of a knowledgeable gardener.

  There does not appear to be anything in between these two things."

  This is also a highly inaccurate picture of the industry!! It may very well have been your personal experience but it is by no means the overall reality!! I could write a long dissertation on why it is not valid but I'm out the door to go meet with clients who want exactly what you say does not exist.!! And probably just as well that I leave it at this point, as statements like this with all their fallacious content tend to make my blood boil!

Gardengal I don't think we are trying or seeming to cast aspersions on people like you at all. Designers and people in the industry like you are not the problem, as you obviously really know plants, really care about landscape outcomes, etc.

BUT I affirm westes and I do have valid points about parts of the industry and how they operate. It could well be different in parts of the PNW...as you know I've previously stated, I generally found the design of private gardens from the Bay area up to Seattle to be more thoughtful.

Here is what I am basing my assumptions on:

1) a lot of so called 'green industry' people really don't know much about plants, and as westes alludes to, make more money on hardscaping projects, services, or markups on (usually common) plants

2) I see a lot of really bad landscaping done by so-called 'professional' firms

For example, when a relative was landscaping a well over a million dollar custom home in the outer burbs of Philly, he solicited free consultations from 2 or 3 of the supposedly top notch firms in the area. I happened to be there for one of the consultations. A team of charming, sometimes good looking, smooth talking people show up. 4 of them I think! And what I found quite amusing was they somehow came up with an impressive pre-consultation sketch, on large format paper in soothing pastel colors, maybe using google or bing aerial maps or an earlier drive-by with digital photography, with a complex panoply of expensive plants in front of the stone facade of house. Now, if you're PAYING for the "design services", how can they offer design before you've even signed for anything...? Well, the contract value would have been roughly 50k!!! Clearly the "design" such as it is, was just an afterthought...they were going to make the money on marking up the services and plants! And...I am truly not making this up for dramatic effect...one of the reasons I criticized the busy design was a row of hornbeams, maybe Frans Fountaine but not a detail I would have remembered...blocking a view the front of the house has of a distant valley and row of hills! It was basically, like, stuff 100 fancy wholesale nursery plants in front of the house, in a busy design of multiple rows that made no overall sense. Another neighbor who built his house a couple years later had the same thing going on...and guess what happened a little over ten years later when the house was sold to another party? All of the overgrown mess was removed!

And...the point I was making about Frans Fontaine might have gotten mangled. No doubt it's a good tree that should be used in certain situations. No doubt you are using it correct situations. But it's not going to 'jump off the page' to an average punter at a garden center. 80% of whom are shopping at spring and either looking for a blooming tree or something known as desirable by the masses like an oak or Japanese maple. I'm sure if you talked to (wholesale) growers of trees like hornbeams or beeches, they would acknowledge most either go to 1) the cognescenti, 2) advanced landscapers like yourself for their projects or 3) retail nurseries with 'advanced' salespersons who can talk up the benefit of a tree that is relatively plain looking.

This state of affairs also just reflects how the world is changing. I myself was shocked a few years ago when I called around all the fancy Philly area retail nurseries, and hardly any of them had much variety of cultivar beeches. But they would still be available, probably, in other sales channels to landscapers. OTOH, in the late 1990s when Styers first created a website - and it was still the 'real' Styers nursery not a pet project of the Urban Outfitters guy selling over-priced frou frou and housewares from China - they had scads of cultivars of beech listed as available.

Too often these types of "cannot find anyone" threads boil down to someone wanting professional service for adolescent-with-a-mower price.

they were going to make the money on marking up the services and plants

Consistent with this I was once told by another designer working the market here - who unfortunately died of cancer awhile back - that "you make all your money off of brokering the plants [to the design customers]".

This was somebody that serviced the residential market, including if not mostly the non-wealthy segment of it. I was invited to come to one of their projects once and add my two cents, it was a small enclosed courtyard that was being re-paved and planted (there were raised planters around the edge, in front of the walls).

My friend spent most of the time I was there inside the house, holding the hands of the elderly clients. At one point they and the couple came out and looked at the work in progress from the stoop, then turned around and scurried back inside again.

"Oh dear, oh my, oh dear" was the visual presentation.

gyr_falcon(Sunset 23)

Too
often these types of "cannot find anyone" threads boil down to someone
wanting professional service for adolescent-with-a-mower price.

Ok, sure, there could be some of that. But, just taking tree removal and trimming services, the alleged 'best' person in my county acted like a disrespectful a--hole, and told me absurd falsehoods about the requests I wanted, like removing a branch would cause a certain tree to become 'unbalanced' and I would be better off removing the whole thing. Needless to say I found someone with less high-falutin ideas, who was 1/3 the price and still state licensed, bonded and insured. The 'unbalanced' tree is still somehow alive and thriving, 12 years later LOL. Has survived several hurricanes and ice storms in its "unbalanced" state.

Point is the almighty dollar DOES rule in the end, but DOES NOT always dictate the quality of services you get. I suspect if westes called around in the right channels so to speak, (or I guess facebooked around har har) he could find qualified and experienced REAL gardeners and/or garden oriented landscapers - in the Bay Area, especially. Who probably aren't even as expensive as some full-of-hot-air and marketing-speak type of companies. Maybe the Bay Area's excellent specialty nurseries would be a place to start. Surely Annie's Annuals must have a list of recommended garden helpers?

@gardengal48 I want to be clear that I am not making a statement that all individuals within landscaping fit into the profiles I was giving. The point was that most of the service providers are either simplistic maintenance people or doing large high-end projects. "Most" is not "all". I am going to supply evidence for that, but first let me make a diversion.

It is very clear to me that you are not in the categories I described. You are a very special person who has a deep love of gardens. You have a lot of experience in the nursery side of the business, in operations and as a buyer. You obviously enjoy thinking about plants based on the quality and number of responses you give to questions here. But what I would like to suggest is that you are not common at all. It is very hard to find people like you, in most places.

Now, as some evidence for my claims, please go to Yelp and search within two categories: "gardener" and "landscape design".

For gardeners, you will find low-budget lawn sweepers. If any of these people have deep knowledge of soil and plants, they do a superb job of hiding that fact on their websites. Why would you hide such basic information if it was your core skill? The mix of services that are typically offered are weekly maintenance, hardscape installation, and tree services. My kingdom for a single profile on Yelp that talks about deep love of plants and soils and simple garden design projects done by the principal and not done by his "team" of guys he hired at Home Depot.... I mean I have done that exercise and finding just one person who does not fit the general category I described is very hard.

For "landscape design" you find architects, many of whom are superb. But they are not going to support the operation and maintenance of your garden. So pass on that. You also find implementers. But call up these firms and what you quickly realize is they want large projects over $10K. They are never going to supply you with one knowledgeable person who can come over to your house twice a month and supply your plants and garden with some simple love.

I am not making this up. I have called up every single one of the top 20 rated firms on Yelp in both of these categories and most of them simply do not provide the services of what you call a "fine gardener". If it is different in your area, then maybe I should think about buying a vacation home there. Seriously.

@gyr_falcon said "Too often these types of "cannot find anyone" threads boil down to someone wanting professional service for adolescent-with-a-mower price."

Let's talk numbers.

A lawn-sweeper in the Bay Area has an effective cost of about $25/hour. It is what it is.

If you can find a "fine gardener" here, he is working on the estate of some extremely loaded billionaire (we have many of these here). He is charging $125 to $200 per hour for his time.

In between those extremes, it is a wasteland here. I would expect to find people who love plants and soils and simple garden design projects for something under $50/hour. But a) you don't find fine gardeners at all and b) when you find the few who can do that work they are only working for the ultra-rich.

So this isn't about hiring professionals for $10 per hour. This is about a complete scarcity of a required skillset. And that scarcity creates a price for the service that means no middle-class household can afford it. There is something very wrong in the world when a middle-class person cannot afford to have a real gardener.

I think part of the reason there's a scarcity though, is because there's not a market. Especially in this country. A lot of people simply don't know any better: a guy who cuts the grass, blows leaves, and "feeds the plants" every spring (often a bad idea), is good enough.

Do the advanced gardeners really make that much? I doubt it. Maybe a handful...but I think if Larry Ellison saw a line-item on his estate invoice for gardener, $200 an hour, he's cross it out. Yeah, even him. "Find someone cheaper, it's just moving dirt around." But maybe I'm wrong.

@davidrt28 you might be right that not enough people love gardens enough to want to find a person with the skillset of a fine gardener. It doesn't change my post in any way, right? It just provides a cogent explanation for why I do not find the person I want.

Larry Ellison is easily spending $20K per *month* maintaining his estate. And he isn't even blinking. But he is a special case. The general point is that the market is now segmented into "budget basement" and "price-is-no-object" and anyone in the middle class who wants something between those extremes has a very tough job finding a qualified service provider.

"Larry Ellison is easily spending $20K per *month* maintaining his estate."

Yes, but not to one single person.

But agree with your overall point of the market being segmented.

Might I suggest that Yelp is not where one looks for this sort of person? I do believe there ARE folks out there with skill set you are looking for - I know of several in my little community and I doubt we are that unique - but few have the inclination to develop a website or online presence to tout their services. Jobs are all word of mouth or by referrals from other landscape professionals or nursery sources. And for those types of "fine gardening" skills, there is a limit as to how many new clients they take on........generally their services are in far greater demand than the time they have to indulge them. And I hope I gave you some avenues to investigate to find such a someone in your other postings.

I would also apologize for my earlier posting outburst :-) It was early, I was rushed and I could have worded things better. But I do get a bit incensed when very generalized comments or conversely, very personal experiences, appear to tar the entire industry with the same brush. My experience and my relationships with my professional peers has just not proven this to be anywhere close to the reality of the situation. I can honestly say this is one hell of a way to try to make a living and I don't know anyone who is getting rich doing so!! And maybe that is why these types of people are proving difficult to locate........despite their love of plants or gardening, who wants to work like a skivvy day and day out for what is essentially peanuts compared to what they could earn in another field? Fewer and fewer skilled people are entering this segment of the workforce. Being a 'gardener for hire' is becoming a dying art :-)

@gardengal48 I do see how any career involving a love of nature is going to tend to be a vocation. And I can echo your sentiment that the few people who do work as fine gardeners seem to be very picky about who they work for, and they generally do not (need to) advertise.