Best Way to Buy Plants by Mail

We’ll assume that for months you’ve been reading about plants. You may have subscribed to a magazine or two; you’re probably looking in the newspapers for garden columns and seasonal articles. Perhaps you’ve watched other gardeners and you have an idea that there are some plants that you would like and that you don’t see at your local nursery. You will have to send for catalogs. Now comes pure joy; you can indulge yourself in daydreams. The hardest thing will be saying no and cutting down your list. (This is easier to do when you add up the numbers in the right-hand column. I find this cuts the list down pretty quickly.)

There are advantages and disadvantages to ordering by mail. You may be able to get some uncommon plants, but a drawback will be that they’ll have to be in transit for several days unless you want to pay extra for express delivery. Many will be quite small; obviously, a large plant in a big pot of soil will arrive with a considerable added shipping cost.

More important than these disadvantages is one you may not have thought of. Some of these uncommon plants you want are being grown and sold by nurseries several zones warmer than yours. No wonder you haven’t seen them in gardens on your neighborhood walks! So take care to order plants that will survive in your climate.

Mail-order nurseries offer plants either bare-root or potted in a growing medium. Bare-root plants, mostly trees and shrubs but some perennials, too, have usually been dug in the fall and held over in cold storage all winter. They don’t begin to grow until you plant them. They look very dispiriting when you take them out of the package, but most, roses in particular, do very well when they’re shipped in this way. (Once my husband, unwrapping two young apple trees, was heard to say with some indignation, “Someone has sent you two sticks.”)

When the plants arrive potted in a growing medium, you’ll dis­cover that the packing from some nurseries holds up better than that from others. For this reason, among others, you should unwrap any package as soon as it arrives. Some nurseries offer packs of three or six of the same kind, individually pot­ted. Generally, the plants will be young and small and probably won’t bloom the first year, but they are much less expensive. Plant them out in well-prepared soil to be sure they make good root growth, and they’ll be beautiful in the second year. Of course they are less expensive—you’re doing part of the work of bringing them on; the price goes up when the nursery has to hold them for another whole year.

If you can’t plant them the minute they arrive, water the plants and put them in a shaded, protected place for a couple of days. They’ve been in a box, remember, for at least three or four days before you get them.