Santa Rosa Gardens Order

After the Wholesale Nursery debacle, I had pretty much sworn off of buying plants from online nurseries. But this year, when I wanted very specific plants for my particular color scheme, I began thinking it would probably be okay to order from nurseries in Oregon because at least the plants wouldn't have to travel as far.

While I was poking around doing searches for the heuchera in the specific colors I wanted, I found all of them on clearance for $5.99 and $2.99 at the Santa Rosa Gardens website. Then I found some columbines in good colors for $2.99; those would be perfect for the backyard rain garden. And the more I looked, the more I found that I had to have. Honestly, I got a little shopping cart happy when I was perusing their clearance plants. Even though I was reluctant to order from them, I had a moment of weakness and clicked the order button.

At the time, I thought they were located in California, which seemed not so much further than Oregon. At least it's on the west coast. But I learned after I placed the order that they're actually in Florida! Oops.

Anyway, my order arrived today, just three days after I placed it. This time, my result was MUCH different.

Wow, each plant was individually wrapped

The boxes come with these neat little trays designed to hold the pots perfectly

When you pick the pots up you can feel a little of the dirt has been knocked out of the pot. If you support the netting, you can shake most of the loose dirt back into the pot.

Each plant has this little net thing on it to hold the dirt.

They recommend you cut off the netting from the bottom and pull it off from the top so you don't bust stems/branches.

The columbines were looking a little parched, and there were a few broken stems here and there, but they're looking pretty good—and alive—which is a nice change.

Here they are! A little bedraggled, but mostly looking healthy.

Some of these plants were ordered for the backyard Hidden Garden, which isn't ready yet. So, those will get repotted into gallon pots and we'll keep them on the back patio until we're ready to plant them in a month or two.

Update: They just sent me a 50% off coupon for the holiday if anyone is interested. The discount is off the clearance prices.