Comments regarding Garden Delights Online Plant Nursery

I classify my comment as 'Neutral' because I had lovely experiences with perennials ordered from Plants Delight several years ago when I lived in TX Hill Country. Plants were in reasonably sized pots and pots were full, plants were healthy and well-packaged. I did not object to the higher prices in comparison to other mail order nurseries because I had a secondary motive for ordering from them - their scientific work in developing new and improved plants & for rescuing endangered plants. I wanted to support this.

Fast forward to fall, 2018. Yikes, is this the same company? I'm back in Texas from abroad now, further east this time, near San Antonio and ordered from Plants Delight once again. Their pots are smaller than other mail order nurseries, only 3.5" so I expected these pots to be full. Ferns I ordered had 2-3 green fronds each & one plant looked as if it had been thrown at the pot with hopes of landing. Fortunately, I was home at delivery & immediately re-potted the parsimonious fern offerings, glad that they were ferns & should recover. A third fern, a lingua, was passable, at least it filled the pot better than the other two.

But big complaint was the half-dead 'Mouse Ears' Hosta. After my second attempt to extract a response from Customer Service to my email with photos - meanwhile, the Hosta had continued to decline rapidly and all the leaves were completely brown - I finally got a response, saying that the nursery mgr had looked at my photos and declared that the Hosta, "had gone into early dormancy." (During 3 days of shipping? Hmmm.)

The email instructed me to plant 'Mouse Ears' in the ground & if it did not reappear in spring, "green & true to cultivar," I should "let them know." I followed those instructions within the hour of receiving their email, so we shall see. I'll return to Dave's & update my review of Plant Delights in spring 2019. I hope to be able to move my review to Positive because, as an active environmentalist, I really want to support their work.

As an aside, Plant Delights' recent Newsletter remarked that 2018 had been very difficult for them & they were glad to see it behind them. I do understand difficult years, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It will depend on whether 'Mouse Ears' emerges and, if not, whether they do the responsible thing and replace the plant with a healthy one.