Re: OT: Consumer Revolt!

Al Limberg: 

Thanks for your interesting posting on how to deal with mail fraud. I'm 
definitely flagging this info to keep because both my husband & I do a 
lot of mail-order purchasing & have fought many a battle with suppliers 
that did us dirty.

As to first-hand experience with gardening purchases by mail, I agree 
with everyone's comments re Michigan Bulb, in spades. I too suckered for 
their ads, two times widely separated by years (I foolishly tho't they 
couldn't have stayed in business if they had continued to send puny, 
non-productive bulbs &/or never send exactly what one ordered but "mix 
up" at least part of every order) & never received any real 
satisfaction. Michigan Bulb is, & will forever remain, on my S___ List!

But I must speak in cautious defense of Springhill, which has also been 
spoken of in this forum as a bad or deceptive source of bulbs, rhizomes 
& perennials. I have never bought any iris from Springhill & am also too 
new to the iris "family" & its vast numbers of species, hybrids & named 
cultivars to comment on whether this mail order source is wrongly 
identifying their offerings.

However, I have bought a number of other things from Springhill in the 
past 3-4 years & received just what I expected for their prices; that 
is, small but healthy plants that thrived for me & decent-sized bulbs 
that grew well & bloomed as described/pictured in their catalog, 
whatever cute names they may bestow on them. (I've noticed that they've 
started including latin names in all their listings, which is useful 
because they still don't list any best-guess as to zones & I have to 
look up everything I haven't yet grown in my location.)

I'm pretty new to "serious" gardening (5 years) as opposed to plunk it 
in the ground wherever & hope for the best because I have to get to work 
gardening. Being self-employed now, I can at last direct more time & 
tho't to it all. We have a lot of property to brighten up with blooms & 
I am trying for diversity (I want everything that will grow here!) 

Like a lot of people, I have little cash I can devote to these efforts: 
I grow as much as possible from seeds & cuttings, increase thriving 
plants by divisions & trade with other gardeners. I also buy from the 
excellent local nursery (lots of natives & well-adapted "foreigners") & 
at plant sales (Denver Botanics annual sale is a mecca for me) & from 
several mail-order sources that have proven themselves to me, at least, 
among them Springhill.

I often can't justify the strain on our budget of buying things from, 
say, White Flower Farms or the wonderful High Country Gardens in Santa 
Fe, both of whom I have purchased happily from in the past & will again 
when my desires outrun my frugalness. It's just that I have to keep a 
grip on it all & price does influence where my orders go, no question. 
But I don't expect to get the same quality, range of choice or the plant 
& bulb size from the "discount" sources that I would from the top dogs. 

When you've got champagne tastes & a beer budget you do what you can, 
right? 

Marte in the mtns	Zone 4/Colorado		Sunny today, but we'll 
probably get our "normal" dust-settler-type showers this afternoon. Hope 
the cloudburst/flash flood era has ended for the summer!
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