Comments regarding Wayside Gardens

In Dec of 1997 I placed an order with Wayside. I was told it would be shipped in January 1998. This was entirely acceptable. The shipment was finally received in May and what was labeled Clematis armendii is actually a Sweet Autumn. I'm sorry, but I find this totally unacceptable and shall never be ordering from Wayside again.

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!

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.