Art's Nursery

Posted on February 14, 2010, updated February 14, 2010 all products i bought from here flourished and thrived; really good place to go!

Will most likely not order from this mail order company again. Tubers were small, one did not sprout at all, two out of 5 dahlias were not available, took several emails, phone calls to get a refund cheque issued. Eh, but I got a free marking pencil from them ;)

I thought I made my order fairly early in the ordering season but two of my items got subsitiuted with something else. I was really looking forward to those particular ones, as they were Fab 50 selections. The ones that came were not even a reasonable facsimile of the ordered ones, in terms of color. I ordered a yellow cactus and a bronze, and got a dark red and a red-and-white. It would have been nice if they tried to send another cactus or at least the same color, not different form AND color. The two bonus tubers were a bit of a "dark horse". On one I could find very little information, and on another I had to phone the company to find out ANYTHING. The latter did very well, while the former didn't make it. They did, however, arrived in a timely fashion and in good shape if not overly large. With the exception of the one, they all grew and thrived.

The tubers I received were extremely small and took FOREVER to finally send up a shoot. Most of them did make it but 5 or 6 did not (and I started them in little pots because they were so small so I could monitor them). I emailed the company the following spring but got no response. At the price for their tiny tubers, I will not order from them again.

Our last order was in 2004. They had a great looking website and unusual varieties but we ended up receiving our dahlia tubers very late in the season for planting. When we opened the package, it noted that one variety wasn't available (would've been nice to hear that 4 months earlier by e-mail) & half the tubers yielded "mixed colors" instead of the named varieties that we ordered. Mis-labelled plants, poor communication & late shipment resulted in no new orders from us.

I had REALLY high hopes for this nursery. Their website would make any dahlia lover drool. January of 2004 I ordered over $100 worth of the most beautiful flowers i had ever seen. When they arrived, the tubers were well marked, but VERY dry. Perhaps they were held for inspection? I soaked them overnight, planted them in pots and watched and watched and watched and babied and babied and babied them. All but one did sprout, and grow, but they were so slow to get going that i only got one bloom out of all all those plants. I thought the poor things had such a rough start that they were just resting for a year. I dug them up in the fall, and there was almost no growth from the tubers. In the spring they looked terrible. I had others that did fine, so it wasn't my method of storage. One of them actually pulled through and had quite a few lovely flowers last fall, but for the most part they didn't make it. I didn't contact the company, because at that point it had been a whole year, so i can't say what their customer service is like. Art's did send bonus tubers with my order and a buy one get one free coupon, which was nice. I am not sure if it lack of quality tubers, or just that the shipment took so long to get into the country and the tubers suffered irreparable damage. Overall, the year i spent doting on the tubers for just one to survive and bloom was extremely disappointing and sad. Melissa Lewis