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[SHADEGARDENS] Nurseries

Gee, Alex, what a great idea to list your favorite nurseries! I'll give you
a favorite or two of mine too! I know that I kind of get spoiled and stop
looking at other nurseries when I find one I like. Here are some other GREAT
nurseries around the country.
Rice Creek Gardens-Minneapolis....wonderful selection of small woodies and
perennials with particular emphasis on alpines. They, however, do not do
mail order. My favorite place to go when in Minnesota!

The Flower Factory-Stoughton, Wi.....incredible selection of over 2500
herbaceous perennials. Someone asked about sources for Corydalis 'Blue
Panda'...they have it; they also carry 'China Blue'. GREAT PRICES compared
to some of the other places. They carry everything from prairie plants and
woodland ephemerals to the latest heucheras and pulmonarias. They do not do
mail order either. People drive from Iowa, southern Minnesota, and Illinois
to shop there.

Plant Delights- somewhat pricey, but a great catalogue with lots of
'oddities', particularly in Arisaemas and Asarums. Tony travels all over the
world to collect.

The Lily Garden- Washington or Oregon (I won't take the time to look exactly
right now). They sell only Lilium bulbs.....great quality, and lots of the
down-facing hybrids that are so exotic-looking in the garden.

The Lily Nook-Canada, but they have an outlet in North Dakota for those of
us who live in the states. They also carry lots of downfacers (these are
lilies that hang down instead of having their faces to the sky). I saw some
lilies at Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver, BC that were absolutely
unbelievable, copied their names, and looked in vain for them till I
discovered The Lily Nook.

Cordon Bleu- California . They specialize in daylilies, and send huge double
fans of the cultivars that they sell, and include gift plants of up to
one/fourth of your order. They are middle-of-the-road on price.

The interesting thing about nurseries is that good ones come in all shapes
and sizes. Some offer a couple hundred odd varieties, and they cater to the
'collector'....the person who is constantly craving new and different and
somewhat difficult plants to grow. They usually charge big bucks for their
plants, because they have a corner on those varieties....but they aren't
great nurseries for beginners or intermediate gardeners. They are wonderful
for fanatics! Then there are the nurseries who have found a niche selling
only one type of plant (like lilies or ferns), and they perform a real
service to their customers, because they will often have lots more varieties
of that type of plant than you would find in the the 'collector' nursery.
And last, you get the large nursery that sells a lot of different plants,
and caters to the beginner as well as the serious collector. It doesn't
usually carry the 'difficult' plants, but it may very well carry the exotic
plants. There are usually plants in every price range from the new hosta
varieties to the common phlox subulata. If you're not sure of what you want,
this is often a good place to start, since you can see a wide range of plant
material, and with the good ones, get good help at finding the right plant
for your situation. For the majority of us, cost is the limiting factor on
our addiction, so we either choose small numbers of 'elite' plants or we
want to grow some of everything. Since I'm one of those people who wants
everything, I need to deal with all three types of nurseries. I'd love to
hear from some of the rest of you in other parts of the country about some
GREAT nurseries that you deal with! It makes for a wonderful side trip when
traveling in your part of the country, even if I can't take anything home on
the plane.....well, maybe one......well, maybe two....<BG>

The second thing is that I would disagree with the statement that there are
no shade lovers. If a plant does well in the shade and does not tolerate
sunshine, I would consider it a shade lover. In my climate, blue hostas do
not tolerate sun...they look awful.....they burn....and their leaves never
recover from that frying, so in my climate, they are shade lovers. Some
things are shade lovers, and 'sun-tolerant', meaning that they will take
some sun, but will be much happier in the shade. Many of our wildflowers do
not do well in full sun. I think that this is one of the most interesting
parts of being able to communicate with people all over the world...we get
to learn their growing differences. The plants also change their needs
depending on whether they're in pots in a nursery or whether they're in the
ground. Corydalis 'Blue Panda' in the nursery goes downhill and dies very
quickly if given similar amounts of water to other things, but seems to be
happiest in moister soil when in the ground. Gardening is an experiment,
because no two sites are exactly the same....they differ in drainage, amount
of rainfall, soil composition.....what works in one garden, doesn't work in
another. I find myself learning more all the time; and the great thing about
plants is that the learning is never done! There is no human being that
knows everything about plants, and there never will be. We each have our own
area of 'high' knowledge, and we have areas that we can learn from everyone
else. That's the beauty of the listserves. Jean Bawden-Madison, Wi
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