Comments regarding Wayside Gardens

Wayside can be good or bad, depending upon what you order. I highly recommend them for bare root roses and their wonderful hydrangeas. You can do much better on perennials elsewhere and there is a 50-50 chance of a problem on their non rose bare root stock.

All orders were placed during the same week. Arrival time spanned over a month. All plants appeared well-wrapped and healthy at that time. All were planted as per instructions. Wayside Gardens…one plant is dead. Their catalog suggests this is a full-sun plant; but even here in Zone 5b-6a and in partial shade, our other one struggled to survive the heat/sun of its first few weeks. I reported the above to their Customer Service; they promise a replacement Petasites this fall. They have not yet given up hope that the clematis will survive. [update August 99]They have already promised to replace or credit the petasites, but will not give up on the Clematis until fall is fully upon us.

A great catalog - pictures and reference info. Ordered 2 hostas, 2 shrubs - all expensive but hard to find elsewhere. One hosta received completely rotted and late in the season - not even packed like other plants. Other hosta was well packed and grew well. Same situation with shrubs - one in poor condition but established OK, other was fine and began blooming very quickly.

The rose I received from Wayside has never performed well and has made me very skeptical of their quality.

I ordered from Wayside for the first time last spring and wasn't that thrilled. I bought a Tricyrtis and 3 unusual annuals. The annuals arrived broken and never really got looking very good and the Tricyrtis was very small for the price. However in the fall sale they had some expensive rhododendrons for $7.25 each! At that price I couldn't resist and I was really surprised at the size and vigor of the plants they sent.

I bought from Wayside Gardens, and their irises are very small and take 2 years to get a good flower.

I have been ordering many plants this past year or two, since I have drastically increased the number of perennial beds in my yard. My experience with Wayside Gardens: Delivery good; prices, fairly high; quality of plants, fair; size- small. Nice catalog though.

This December I have ordered a few trees, roses and shrubs from Wayside. It is April 19 and have not received my order yet, I hope I'm not overreacting I do live in Buffalo, NY so maybe they think its still too early, but this year it is very warm for this time of year, planting season started much earlier this year.

I have stopped ordering plants from Wayside Gardens and Park Seed. (They are one and the same company, and send the exact same plants from the exact same growers.) There are so many other mail order nurseries who send bigger, healthier plants at cheaper prices, that it is not worth the gamble with Wayside. I ordered some gingers, hardy to zone 7, for approximately $15 each. I expected to receive growing plants, but received dry ginger roots. This was not indicated in the catalog. It took months to get them growing, and I had to hold them over in my greenhouse for one year. What you pay for with Wayside Gardens is a fancy catalog, and an unconditional no questions asked, money back guarantee.

Like their catalogue & have never had a bad plant ----BUT --- I really objected last year when the roses I ordered took for ever to arrive. Finally the customer service admitted that the reason for the lateness -- too wet to dig roses in CA. Since I live in CA -- a big DUH!! Turns out they dig up in CA, then ship to wherever they are back East, and THEN mailed to me!! Turns out I live 3 hrs from the too wet fields. Big boo, hiss. Other than that, they're ok!

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.

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 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.