Comments regarding High Country Gardens

I have ordered from this company 3 or 4 times but will not again. Most of the plants I have received from them have been small and spindly and I have to grow them on in a greenhouse for a season before planting out. Probably half have just outright died or not returned after winter (and thus after their guarantee has expired). When I have sent emails regarding problems none have been acknowledged. The last order I made was a complete disappointment and, after writing a snailmail letter to the company, I did receive a refund for the order. None of the plants from that order are strong enough to go in the garden this year; they're all in the greenhouse. I will stick with companies with responsive customer service and healthy plants.

Lavenders purchased absuredly small (only about 2-1/2" Plant Size), sold by "pot size". Other plants purchased (5) as per their largest pots - not at all near mature growth size as pictured in their catalog. A word to all: Never buy plants from anybody, unseen, by "Pot Size" - it don't mean a thing. Request actual Plant Size, age, or number of years to reach mature growth.
As an aside;
The lavenders are way too small, to plant in ground. Will have
to pot-up for the TLC they need at this tiny size. Hopefully,
will be mature enough to plant in-ground by fall.
At the $100.+, I spent, I expected a whole lot more...

"

High Country Gardens strives to offer the best plants, products and service available. Our plants are shipped with a hardy root system which are ready for planting in your garden. The root systems on the 2 1/2" pots usually catch up to or exceed the growth of a gallon pot within a growing season. Lavenders and native plants prefer growing in soil and we recommend that you plant them immediately in your garden where they will begin to thrive. We provide a David's Helpful Planting Guide with each plant order and are available to answer any planting questions you may have through our customer service department. If you have any questions or concerns we are in customer service Monday through Friday 9am to 5pm MST."

In my first experience with this company I submited a large order. The order arrived last week. The grass plugs arrived in good shape. However the other plants that I ordered were another matter. Both of the Veronica X Blue Reflections arrived nearly dead. 3/4 of the leaves are brown and brittle. The two Hymenoxys acaulls are skinny and scrawny plants that I would not have bought if I had seen them.

Given how fussy these plants appear to be, I needed bigger seedlings than these tiny things. There was nearly a 100% mortality rate by spring, but what really shocked me when I finally looked closely at the invoice was that they had charged me shipping of roughly 23%!!!!!!!! I don't know anyone else who charges even half that.

That's outrageous even for perfectly packed shrub-size plants, which these were not.

Now I just shred their catalog when it arrives, use it for much.

"

Dear Summerkid,

I am very sorry you are unhappy with the plants from High Country Gardens.

I want you to know that the plants are guaranteed and you can choose to have replacement plants , a refund on the plants or a credit to order something else.

We would very much appreciate the opportunity to rectify the current situation.

Sincerely yours,
Ava Salman
Vice-President
"

It does no good to have a space on the on-line order form for comments about the order when the comments are ignored. I asked that my order be shipped immediately instead of waiting so that it would arrive for weekend planting, as I had weekend committments and wanted to get the plants in the ground. There was no indication from HCG that they ever even read the request. I finally called them and was told by a very rude "Customer Service" rep that it was not possible to ship earlier unless I paid for 2nd day air. I don't believe that shipping charges should be used as extra profit margin. Good customer service involves assisting the customer, not just sticking to rigid rules with no explanation. After this hassle, the plants finally arrived extremely small. It's my first and last order from HCG, and I will tell all my gardening friends, as well as the staff at my garden shop about my poor service.

Simply the best. Hands down. I'd like to see more rock garden/bunnery plant offerings as well as rose bush (shrub) offerings. I ordered online a couple of weeks ago and somehow the single $50 gift certificate I ordered showed up as two $50 in the checkout. As this was to be a gift for a friend, I didn't want it to be that generous. I emailed them and received a call back over the weekend and during off season no less! They advised me to call first thing Monday morning and that there should be no problem in canceling the extra gift certificate. Monday morning at no later than 8:15 a HCG supervisor, Kurt, called me before I had a chance to call them to help fix the order. I do want to add that one of the negative comments from a person who thought his plants had a virus makes me wonder if somehow a chemical injury was involved. Many years ago when I was working at a retail nursery a favorite customer came in incensed that all his new plants were dying, drooping, yellowing and the leaves were shriveling/curling up. It was a very large planting job. One of the owners went out and checked out the yard, and indeed it was as the customer had said. About a week later the customer came back into the nursery and was very apologetic. It seems he had discovered that while he thought he'd been spraying his new landscape job with hose-end ready to use fertilizer, it was 2-4-D instead! I've also remember customers spraying their plants with OFF and the like as "it was to kill bugs wasn't it??" It happens: we all mess up now and then be it the supplier, the homeowner or the delivery company making deliveries in non-air-conditioned trucks along with the boxed plants in a 90-100 degree weather. But isn't the glory of gardening worth it all!?

This is the first time I have used HCG, and I just received my order. Overall a positive experience, however I will point out these issues:

The plants are tiny. Granted they all arrived in good health and were as described in their catalog. However I was shocked to have paid $6 for an agave measuring no more than one inch tall, and having only four leaves. The other plants I ordered were all equally small.

I am not fond of their practice of rubber-banding the plastic bag around the stem of the plants for shipping. Agreed that the plants did arrive intact, but it made unpacking very difficult and hard to wrestle the rubberband back off without hurting the plant.

To end on a positive note, there was ample notice via email when the order was going to arrive. I like that they sent the tracking number to me so I could know which day to be home to get the package.

"

Thank you for the positive rating. All of us at High Country Gardens pride ourselves in providing the best plants, shipping and customer service.

Agave's are slow growing native plants that are often not as impressive in pots as other more vigorous non-native plants like Shasta daisies. After reading the comment about our Agave, Inge, our senior cacti grower, wanted to communicate that our crop of Agave parryi have taken 24 months of careful care to get from seed to shipping size. She added, "look at the root system."

For many native plants and large tap rooted perennials, the quality of the plants are in the well developed root system not the top growth. Strong healthy roots are the key for a plant to successfully transplant and thrive in the garden.
"

I ordered from them last year. What a good idea for a small company - to focus on xeriscaping plants, especially (but not limited to) natives of the N. American west. Catalog was gorgeous - not cheap, but I like to support small companies, and they carried a lot of rare plants. Minimum order of 6 plants, so I ordered a native columbine, a shrub, two non-native lamiums, and two asclepias tuberosa that were advertised as specially adapted to clay soil.

Everything arrived okay, and I was very pleased that the leader of the shrub had been bent over rather than chopped off. But the asclepias looked diseased. Left in pots in the sun to 'recover' they greened up a bit but were still obviously infected with a virus. I called the company, spoke to a nice person, and later received two replacement asclepias - which showed identical symptoms of the same virus. All 4 went into the trash. I didn't call the company again. The columbine looked healthy so I put it into a border; but later in the summer all the other plants around it began showing signs of severe viral infection - mottled and striated leaves, distortion in new leaf growth, chlorosis, death. I am concerned that this company may be sending out infected stock. Their catalog is tempting, but I will not order from them again.

"Written by David Salman, President of High Country Gardens and professional horticulturist with a B.S. degree in Horticultural Science from Colorado State University.

We take great exception to these unsubstantiated and untrue (and frankly malicious) accusations. Our company prides itself in growing top-quality quality plants and offering our customers the best possible customer service. This person is obviously not a plant pathologist and makes statements that have no scientific basis and show a lack of understanding about plant viruses. To confirm the presence of an injurious virus, tissue samples have to be tested at a qualified tissue culture lab.

High Country Gardens has never had injurious viral problems in our plants. We grow all the plants we sell. We use the most up-to-date horticultural practices to keep our plants free of insect vectors, keep only clean, healthy stock plants and maintain excellent sanitation in all of our production and propagation methods. We are regularly inspected by the state of New Mexico Dept. of Agriculture whose inspectors are looking for injurious insects and plant diseases.

Regarding these unsubstantiated and untrue accusations:

Asclepias tuberose is a slow growing, highly variable native plant that is often not as pretty in the pot as other more vigorous non-native plants like Shasta daisies. It must be planted in the garden and given a full growing season to establish its large tap root and to push out strong, full-sized shoots and foliage. Our healthy Asclepias plants are grown from field grown seed purchased from a very reputable native seed supplier.

Regarding the healthy Columbine plant (showing no signs of any disease problem) somehow infecting the plants surrounding it with virus; not possible! In all likelihood, this person has overlooked other problems that are causing their established plants to be in poor health. These could be due to injurious insects attacking the plants, an infestation of leaf or soil nematodes, a nutrient deficiency in the soil or soil-borne diseases not at all related to alleged viral problems.
"

My experience was similar to others described here, including small plants, broken stems, dead and mushy, expensive, with the added problem that when I called to request reshipment I had to leave a message because they weren't answering their phones. A man called back, but I was in the garden up to my elbows in mud. I told my daughter to ask him if I could call him back after I'd cleaned up, and he started shouting at her. I then took the phone, mud and all, and told him I couldn't talk until I washed the mud off my hands, and he started shouting at me, screaming about how his time was valuable, and I was the one that contacted them, and if I wanted help I was going to have to talk to him right then. It was very scary, he sounded insane. I asked to speak to the owner, and he said he WAS the owner! NEVER NEVER NEVER AGAIN.

We placed two orders this spring, scheduling them to arrive on different weeks. After the first order arrived on a Monday with the plants looking like they spent the weekend in the back of a hot truck, I called HCG to make sure the next order would be shipped for the weekend as they promised. As of Tuesday, they said it was packed and ready to be shipped. Again, the order did not arrive until Monday and this time the plants had several yellow leaves and were very wilted. The UPS tracking ticket says the order was not dropped off for shipping until Thursday night. We're not impressed.

I too ordered from, High Country Gardens, in the fall of 2000. That was my first mistake! I did enjoy their colorful and informative catalogue but my enjoyment with them stopped there. I ordered many of their over-priced plants and all came to me dry, wilted and suffocating in plastic baggies with rubber bands breaking off their heads. With planting season short and time running out, (in Arizona our best planting time is in October so, I had little time to nurse the plants to some sort of planting condition before planting season was gone) I managed to nurse them to some transplantable shape and took the risk of putting them in the garden. That was my second mistake; as I should have taped the box back up and sent it straight back to them, however, I didn't have time to wait for another order from someplace else. I should have just gone to a local nursery and since this experience, that is exactly what I do now. Out of 10 VERY expensive plants only 4 stayed alive to see Spring, despite my constant and best efforts. When I contacted the company, about my dissatisfaction, I was told that I should have called them for a refund sooner. However, I had no way of knowing which plants were alive in the middle of winter and so I had to wait until spring to make that determination and that phone call. So, their "money back guarantee" didn't apply to my situation. My spring plants dead, our fall planting season wasted and my money long gone. I still enjoy drooling over their catalogue but only use it for gathering planting ideas and buy elsewhere. I will NEVER order from them again and would not recommend others to do so either.

Regarding feedback on your (terrific) list, I've had some experience with High Country Gardens. While they fill a great niche for hardy dry country plants, I was quite disappointed with the first order--for Aquilegia formosa--I received from them. The plants were extremely small and none survived past the first year, despite my careful ministrations. These are fussy plants, I'll admit, but they should have been larger at the price! Fifty bucks down the hole. C'est la vie.

I noticed that the information about the catalog doesn't discuss plants received, just the catalog (and I thought that the description of that was overly glowing. True, it's in color, but the (print) quality leaves something to be desired. Granted, it's much better than no pictures at all.) I just received several plants this morning (my first order) & they look pretty sad (drooping, yellow and dead leaves). They look like they're going to make it but they could've benefited from better packaging. I knew it wasn't too great when I picked up the box and dirt sifted out. All the plants were potted with a baggie around the pot and a rubber band around the plants' necks (they were boxed horizontally). This broke some of the stems. Also some of the plants were quite dry, perhaps taking the xeric thing a little too far! There is a 6-plant minimum, which I found somewhat annoying, as the catalog's selection is not closely aligned with my interests. I feel that as long as I'm willing to pay the shipping & handling I should be able to order any quantity I darn well want. Also, though there's an 800 number, I couldn't ever get anyone to answer the phone & take my order, though I was calling during the correct hours. I ended up having to fax my order, which I've never had to do with *any* other catalog, and I've ordered from dozens.