Comments regarding Wayside Gardens

I've had nothing but good luck with Wayside Gardens. I've bought many perennials from them and all have been healthy. My Lenten rose from Wayside has been planted next to a Lenten rose from White Flower Farm for three years, and in each of the three years the Wayside one has been bigger and had more blooms. Also Wayside always sends a follow-up letter asking for feedback about my experience with them. No other garden catalog has done that in my experience.

I think Wayside Gardens is wonderful even if it is part of Park Seeds. Both companies give top rate service. With Wayside you don't have to remember to notify them if any plants purchased from them to not thrive (which has been a rare experience for me). They usually send a note of inquiry and enclose a postage paid envelope with the note. I have always had a satisfying experience with Wayside Gardens and Park Seeds. I think it is worth paying a little extra when I want to be sure of the quality of plants ordered by mail and know that they are interested enough to follow up the order with a request for comments and pay the postage. Wayside is the only nursery I've purchased plants from that does this.

While gardening is not a new hobby for me, my wife and i have never before lived on a sunny enough property to grow roses. As a completerose novice, my experience with Wayside Gardens has been entirely positive. All the plants arrived dormant, of the eleven ten have putout leaves and will survive. One started to put out leaves, but then turned black and died. When I called Wayside, they gave me credit for the plant and shipping. What more could anyone ask from a catalogue seller??The blooms are lovely and seem to meet the description and photo. They are expensive versus some catalogues, but much cheaper than some local nurseries. As to the quality of the plants, I have had problems with aphids and black spot…Finally, the staff on the telephone have been exceedingly helpful and willing to answer my questions. As a novice, I was concerned that several of the plants had bloomed, but Mme Ernst Calvat remained dormant. The telephone staff in response to my calls told me to keep tending the plant as long as it remained green. She broke dormancy last week, so the staff was right.Expensive??? Maybe but if the old expression about "you get what you pay for" is true, Wayside represents value for the dollar.

During the 1940s - 1970s, my grandmother…often ordered from Wayside Gardens and kept all back issues of their beautiful catalogs. The catalogs and their products were then what White Flower Farms (WFF) is now. I gather sometime in the last 20 years they moved the company from Ohio (?) to the Carolinas. I suspect they shifted from being their own grower (as is WFF) to a distributor of plants grown by others. Their past history may explain the high prices and high end image of the company. Generally, I have found the size and quality of their plants to be acceptable but not up to that which they pretend. They seem to be living off their long ago reputation. In the past, their products were equal to WFF's today.

Wayside cannot be called a nursery. They do not grow their own plants. They are simply a shipper - for example I ordered a peony, ignorant of the fact that they get them from Klehm's, right here in Champaign, Illinois. I paid a high overhead for this service! Their catalog often has misinformation about zones and the color is TERRIBLE - the reds and purples especially. If you don't read carefully, you will be disappointed. Try this out on some of the rose descriptions and then look at the accompanying picture.[update]I have been playing games with them for a while. After I asked for replacements two years in a row, they dropped me from their mailing list. So much for good customer relations. I felt like I was being penalized for making claims for bad plants. When I realized that I wasn't getting catalogs, I called the 800 number to ask to be put back on their list (by this time I was tuning into what was going on and figured to have some fun with them). I still got no catalog, though when I would call they assured me I was on the list. After a year of this, I simply sent in one of their post paid cards with my name spelled differently. I promptly got a catalog!

We placed our first-ever plant mailorder this year, from Wayside Gardens. We crossed our fingers, having never ordered plants from a catalog before. The plants arrived earlier than promised and in perfect condition. They were enclosed and well-supported in a large cardboard box. The soil was moist. The leaves were green, and two of the plants even had someblooms. The plants were in 6" pots and stood at least 10" tall and about 8" wide; I don't know if this is considered good-sized or not, butwe were pleased. They were completely free of pests and disease. The plants looked so good that at first I thought they looked fake! Theyhave been in the ground for a month now and are showing new growth and look healthy. The other day we received a letter from Wayside askingfor comments; I plan to let them know how pleased we are and will order from Wayside again in the future. The prices may be a little higher than at the nursery but the convenience can't be beat especially considering the quality of our product and service.

I have had very good luck with Wayside Gardens, Greenwood, SC although I rarely order roses from them.

I think this catalog has way too high an opinion of itself. Their presentation and their prices lead one to believe that their plants are high quality, and I've found that they are not. In fact, I buy plants at my local Wal-Mart that are better than the ones I've received from Wayside Gardens. Their customer service is excellent, but I am not impressed with their plants.

Some of the items in the Wayside catalog can also be found in the Park's book at lower prices.

I have always received top quality plants from Wayside that are consistently of better quality than the specimens I receive from local nurseries. The few plants I have lost (usually due to my own fault), have been graciously replace by Wayside.

I have received the spring catalog now for several years, and always admire the product, yet the prices are high. So, when I moved this winter to the general vicinity I took an afternoon off and drove over to the nursery in hopes of obtaining some seconds, as they say, just to check out the beautiful specimens. I also thought I'd stop at the nearby Park Seeds, so you can imagine my surprise when I find that the nurseries are one big operation, and that the Wayside name is nowhere to be found, except at the post office and the bank…So I assume that wayside was only a clearinghouse, and never a working garden.) Park Seeds was a real disappointment, in regards to the grounds and the things offered, more like a big giftshop.

I ordered potted and bare root. The bare-root veronica has *thrived* since day one; I couldn't be happier with it. But the salvia (which was on sale, due, I think, to its extremely poor condition) arrived black, barely sprouted, and immediately died. They have been very nice about refunding $ for damaged & DOA merchandise. But seeing how they charge double, they can afford to! I'm going to try to avoid Wayside in future because in my opinion even one DOA is too many. I resent spending my time & effort trying to resuscitate terminal plants that should never have been sent in the first place. On the bright side, they do have a pretty nice selection of books and peripherals. A nice color catalog. And the plants they said would do great in the hot sun do.

This is the one I wish I had read aboutprior to placing my order. Previous comments in your FAQ regarding quality of plants (poor to fair) are borne out by my experience. I ordered 4 groups of 3-of-a-kind plants (12). I received 11 plants that seemed to be split quality-wise by variety. Two of the varieties, allowing for differences in plant habit, were of VERY POOR quality (two or three spindly, weak canes and poorly developed root systems). The other twovarieties I have more hope for (2 to 8 strong, fat canes and reasonably developed root systems). Packing/handling seems to have been a bit careless as I found a fair proportion ofbroken canes and roots apparently the result of "crushing" in the box.By comparison to the published "grading guidelines" for bareroot rose stock…only about three of Wayside's plants could qualify as "Grade 1". I have doubts about the likelihood of survival of several of these poor things and will watch them closely for signs of life.

Price: Expensive. Quality: Excellent. Service and Guarantee: Excellent. Will allow you to keep poorly doing plant and will ship replacement. Catalog: Excellent description and pictures.

I've had bad experiences with Wayside Gardens…[they] mail small, runty specimens and frequently arrive in bad shape, with broken stems or non-producing stems. Worse, some of the plants I received from them had mosaic virus and had to be destroyed. [They] do, however, grant refunds without question or request for returning the specimens.

I use them and have had mostly good experience, although they're somewhat expensive. My sole bad experience, receiving a mis-labeled rose, turned out to be good because I liked it (Louise Odier). When I've gotten a bad plant they've offered either a) keep it and see how it does), b) full money back now if you agree to destroy the plant c) keep the current plant and they'll ship another the next year (in the case of a poor-quality rose that their entire stock wasn't great on). Can't beat that kind of guarantee!