Comments regarding Sutton's Iris Gardens

I'VE ORDERED FROM SUTTONS 3 TIMES. THE PLANTS WERE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL, THEY ARRIVED IN GOOD CONDITION. BUT AT LEAST 25% OF THEM DID NOT HAVE CORRECT NAMES ON THEM.

SO MY WELL PLANNED GARDEN IS NOT SO WELL PLANNED. BUT I DO HAVE A GARDEN I CALL
DAMIFIKNOW. AS I DON'T KNOW WHAT I HAVE.

I sure hope that this company is just having a bad year. I ordered for the first time from them in June 2004 for fall shipping. I requested a July ship date. In mid August I contacted them a total of 3 times in 2 weeks. The first time I was told my order would ship the "next week". When I went to check on it I was told it was not shipped and that they had some large wholesale orders that took longer than expected to dig. They went on to say they had 3 digs in process and my order was in the first bunch. I emailed again and the order was shipped the day of my email (exactly 14 days after my initial shipping status request).

My order was received nearly 45 days later than requested and 4 of my 10 requested varieties were not available and substituted for with either other varieties on my order or different plants entirely.

I wasn't especially overwhelmed by the size of the rhizomes but I've not got a lot of experience buying iris via mail order. I'll wait a year before even considering ordering from them again (I prefer to see if next year is a repeat of the 2004 shipping season).

It's a shame that a first time customer's experience with them, when I had heard such glowing reports about them, turned out so poorly. I'll watch reports here before buying again.

I'm sorry to be the first one to leave negative feedback about this company, but I feel that I must. I placed my order on 8/9 and specifically requesting August shipping. I called them today (9/7) and they said it would ship next week (9/13). I'm in Illinois, so it would take a week to get here, and waiting until late September to plant iris would be risky.
Had I known that they wouldn't ship the order for over a month, I would have ordered from another company. They should have let me know about the delay so that I could have found another source. Six weeks to receive an order is just too long.