Thursday, October 18, 2007

Wayside vs. Ebay

I tried both for my final round of plants in my super new garden (pics coming this weekend as a recap of the feverish 2.5 months to put it in are ending).

Wayside: PRICEY for what I got. Maybe they already sent out all the good-sized plants, but I can go down to my favorite nursery 10 minutes away and get much larger plants for just a few more bucks. The fineline buckthorn looks fine (though tiny), but my $13 buddleia santana consists of one 12" stick with a few leaves. Yeah, that won't take 4 years.

Ebay: IMPRESSED. I really debated on this. For one, it can be sketchy, but two, shouldn't I buy local to support independent nursuries and cut down on transportation costs and pollution? Anyway, no. Perfect Plant on ebay sent me a lovely looking 2' thuja green giant and a small but well shaped and colored viburnum winterthur. Even included a planting guide if one needs it. How much? Viburnum $1, thuja $3. Now, they might employ child slave labor, I have no idea. They might buy their plants from Sven on the corner of 5th and Broadway....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perfect Plant is Wayside Gardens' eBay name...same entity. I have bought from them on eBay but not from the catalogue and have been pleasantly surprised. Go figure!

Lynn said...

I should add that I have no proof if asked for it...just gardener's instinct and the fact that I started to receive the Wayside catalogue after buying from Perfect Plant... they had the same material and descriptions!

Benjamin Vogt said...

Lynn--Thanks for letting me know about this. Tricky tricky plant people. It could be that they shared their mailing list with Wayside, but I like the conspiracy theory better.