I don't think it's silly. Though sometimes if there is something badly wanted it's justified to go farther astray. Generally I do what you do. Fortunately Vintage is 2 hours away from here. I've ordered from Texas and Oregon, which are not that far. For other plants there are some excellent nurseries that are very local. I enjoy being able to speak to the people I'm buying plants from.

If I ordered only from purveyors operating in my zone or under cultural conditions that approximate those found in my own locale, mine would be a bleak, boring garden indeed.

Reading Companula's requirements, my first thought was of the late Mike Lowe and the many roses he imported from Europe to his New Hampshire garden with its short season and often sub-zero conditions. Roses he propagated from some of those carefully tended imports eventually grew in my garden, many hundreds of miles south of New Hampshire. They immediately 'took off', and have flourished to a degree that might well have left Mike dumbstruck.

Of course there are plants one MUST avoid due to one's environment (syringas, for instance, promptly drop dead upon arrival in my neck of the woods). Otherwise, I've found plants to be far more forgiving and adaptable than the gardeners who grow them.

I've found plants to be far more forgiving and adaptable than the gardeners who grow them.

Having seen (via photographs) an astounding collection of Agaves growing in Oxfordshire, I wholeheartedly agree!

well yes, I grow agaves in Cambridgeshire....but I bought them as little plantlets from a local nursery. I just could not imagine them having much of a chance if they had been imported directly from the american south. I am not suggesting growing things which are just native and would also agree that plants are adaptable....which is why I like mine to have already adapted. In truth, there are so many good local nurseries - I can pick roses grown in East Anglia from more than a dozen vendors and I can buy cacti and succulents from a nursery less than 15 miles from my house. Is this really not the case in the US?

I think it's just that some areas that have a strong history of horticulture generally help foster a good give and take between what is grown, sought after, and planted.

I've lived in northern Ohio, and the Great Lakes area of New York, and both of those areas have a strong background in agriculture. Even though many areas up there are no longer being farmed, much of the land has been turned into subdivisions and if the topsoil has not been removed, the available soil is wonderful stuff. In the spring, after all that snow, it's a beautiful time of year, and people want to get out and find a garden center or nursery pick up a basket of flowers, or a flat of vegetables or perennials.

The economy does factor in now, and there are fewer "mom and pop" garden centers that take the time to sow seeds over the winter, and the box stores have certainly made it more difficult. But it also depends on your mindset, if you are of the "back to nature" type, then you will take the time to either sow your own seeds, or find a local nursery out in the country, or hunt down a brave nursery person who supplies city bound people something that is more rare these days.

A lot of people are of the view that gardens, and plants in general are a nuisance, and are too difficult to deal with, many people just like a container or a windowbox of annuals or geraniums and call it good. They get a 'theme' going and every year it's the same vendor, the same plant choice, and the same color, and get quite distressed when those plans fall through.

It's taken me a few years to let them have their view, but if I were in the growing business, I'd have to have to supply those types of people and hopefully get them to try a similar color, or a plant with similar cultural requirements as well.

I'm in a tough spot, where all the different climates come together, and while there are a few independant garden centers around, they generally ship in plugs of hosta and perennials, and the woody materials are shipped from warmer climates. While those are good and well, I have to send for things well outside of my state. I'm glad to support any nursery person with my purchases, I just wish I could get larger specimens and the shipping were less. It's about 50 miles to the closest major town, and the only choices are the box stores, and one nursery who specializes in Japanese maples, and other exotics that hate our hot dry summers.

(I do take the time to drive down to Arkansas to a native plants nursery, and she is a true nurserywoman, and a biologist by training.) She does ship, but not sure if to Europe...and we all have our own native plants that make our areas special, and we can then enjoy and share those places as unique unto themselves.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pine Ridge Gardens

I think the reason why generally it's not the case in the states is that we have (or had) the luxury of wide, flat expanses and also the multiple zonal conditions. Under such a setup, certain areas of the states are better suited for certain tasks. Where I live, the most economical use of the land is "breadbasket": corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. Not saying that a rose nursery wouldn't thrive where I live, but we have high blackspot pressure and low opportunities for moving product to market if the product is flowers. On the other hand, we have 2 major grain mills here that are international suppliers for ethanol, sweetners, etc. Costs less to transport the crop to the mill, so it's a better economy of scale to grow grain.

I'd love to order roses locally, but for me, the closest nurseries are still several hundred miles away.

Whether you know it or not you are buying direct from where ever that plant originally came from. Nurseries don't want to keep stock around for long because they don't make money on it that way. So chances are that, that agave you just bought wasn't on the shelf for more than a few weeks before you took it home.

From a rose manufacturers point of view the best places to grow roses in the USA are in warm climates. They can grow bigger plants faster to get to the market place. They don't make money on roses in the growing fields but on the ones they can ship out. So they want to ship them quick to get their return. As a result most all of the big growers and suppliers have been in Texas and California.

I do buy from my local nurseries but chances are they got those roses, bare root, in the beginning of the year from a grower down south and just potted them up and grew them out in their greenhouse for sale here in May. I don't know of any local nurseries that have growing fields in Michigan. It would take years, with our short season, to grow them big enough for sale and wouldn't be profitable. So they order the bare roots from the big growers and then they charge more for their time and effort of potting and growing them to make a profit too. Even with postage sometimes it's cheaper for me to order it direct myself.

There's also the matter of availability of different varieties. For the most part the local nurseries all get the same old, same old, year after year except for one or two of the new intros for that year. Which ever ones Star, Weeks or J&P are pushing that season. If I want something different I have to order it.

If I had to confine myself to only plants that originated in Michigan I'd be growing a lot of the local weeds. Which I do anyway!

I guess it largely comes down to a question of scale then. The US really is immense compared to the UK - in Cambridge alone, there are 6 garden centres within a 5 mile radius, as well as another 5 or so small independent nurseries and a few large home stores which sell rubbish (no, it honestly is and usually a lot more expensive than either a garden centre or a nursery (cheapest of all). In a 20 mile radius, there are over 20 nurseries, including 2 rose breeders (Harkness and LeGrice) and there is also a big tradition of buying plants from the side of the road - many gardeners will keep a little table and an honesty box outside the front door. So when you americans casually mention driving a few hundred miles away, for us, this is the other end of the country!

I understand the logic behind your question, campanula, and whole heartedly agree with supporting your local businesses and nurseries as opposed to big box stores. It's the only way to preserve diversity and selection, and keep the resources in your community.

The closest I have come to practicing what you're asking has been purchasing plants in the climate zone I was to install them. I wouldn't buy roses in the mid desert to be installed at the beach, though ordering them from the local nurseries in that area results in them ordering them from the mid desert grower and shipping them in. Purchasing the ones which have grown at the beach a while and acclimated to the milder, wetter conditions better shows which will adapt and perform better to those conditions. Buying potted annuals and perennials in the damper climate zones to be planted in those conditions permits them to be installed and perform more successfully without showing displeasure at the changed conditions. If I'm buying for myself, and find what I desire in the coastal area, knowing it can be grown in my more desert like conditions, I will often buy it there and then harden it off to my more severe conditions before planting it. But, you know the issues when installing a plant for someone only to have it look "miffed" at going from cool, damp to hot and dry over night. The same holds true for bud and bloom roses. Take anything from "green house conditions" and put it out in the hot, dry sun (and vice versa) and it is going to complain. It may recover, or it may not, but unless you allow for that, with potted plants it can make a real difference.

When ordering bare root or dormant plants, as long as they are suitable for where you intend to grow them, it should make no difference. If planted and cared for properly, they'll break dormancy and grow as they're supposed to. Kim

Apologies for my comments above. This issue is apparently much more grave, and a great deal more complex (not to mention more dense), than I ever imagined.

Jaxondel, you don't need to be sorry for any comment you have made, your comments reflect the same thoughts many of us have. We want the plants we try to succeed, and some of us push the zones as much as we can, others of us take a more conservative route, and your comments reflect your understanding of both types of gardeners.

In our household I'm the more conservative one, while my husband will pick up any plant to try, and is not worried if it survives or not.

And even when selecting native plants, I don't hold the idea I need to plant only natives from my county-I figure the winds blow where they may, and that someone may have picked the last remaining flower on their way west. We won't know unless we try (within reasonable limits).

hi Jax - no offence taken here either, not even at the persistent misspelling of my nom de guerre. I ALWAYS enjoy your (sometimes snarky) comments. cheers, suzy

I agree with Suzy that it is best to buy plants grown locally but that is no longer possible for me. When I started growing roses 18 years ago there were still several rose nurseries nearby. Nearby meant one hour or less by car. Now they have all been converted to garden centers that buy in all plants from wherever they are cheapest, Holland mostly. Dutch imports are probably the reason for box blight over here. The nearest nursery that grows their roses on their own land is two hours away, still not too bad.

I now send for roses from the south of Sweden or from abroad and most have thrived, even the roses I imported from the US. The biggest problem with importing is that roses are lifted in winter in warmer climates, much too early for Sweden, so they have to be kept indoors in pots untill spring.

I understand Campanula's concerns, but most of us here in the US don't have the same options. It's a question of scale. Because the country is so big and so variable, the general trend of centralization and specialization, which goes on in all aspects of the economy, pushes even the hort industry to specialization. Some climates and industrial infrastructures are best for some plants and not others. While it's true that you could, with enough investment in climate-control structures like greenhouses etc, grow anything anywhere, it gets too expensive pretty fast. People buy what's cheap so producers must concentrate on what they can produce cheaply and sell at a good profit.

Same goes for food. That's why you don't see the smaller subsistence farms anymore, the Jeffersonian ideal of a citizenry of yeoman farmers, because it's cheaper to specialize and ship. If I were limited to what we can grow here, it would be a boring and limited diet indeed. Our best, most profitable crop is timber. We ship timber world wide. Grains won't hardly grow at all. It's cheaper to grow them in drier eastern Washington and ship. We'd be eating root crops and berries and greens and shellfish and salmon and not much else, if we ate only local stuff.

I used to work at a rhododendron producer. Our climate is fantastic for growing rhodies in gardens, but even so, the babies have to be in climate-controlled greenhouses under 24 hour monitoring, with irrigation, fertilizing, lighting in winter, and fungicides. That nursery ships starter rhodies worldwide, in 2" pots, to wholesalers that grow them on and sell them to retailers. We'd ship tens of thousands of these 2" pots at a time to wholesalers in the southern tier of states, where they don't need to heat or light the greenhouses. They in turn would ship the finished product to retailers up north. So your rhodie you bought in Boston in the northeast came from a grower in Florida who got it from us in the far northwestern corner in Washington state.

Oh, that same nursery ships to UK and Europe too, so you, Campanula, might be buying rhodies or kalmias or azaleas that originated in a tissue culture lab in Elma, Washington. Ain't globalization grand??

The retail nursery in town I used to work at produced some of its own annuals and all its fuchsias but they don't anymore. Cheaper to buy in. Some comes from other parts of Washington, some from Oregon, some from who knows where. They used to grow their own poinsettias from starters too, and they were far and away the best poinsettias in town since they didn't get crushed or temperature-shocked in shipping. That was expensive, heating and lighting those things. They don't do that anymore either.

I like the idea of supporting local producers but since our climate is so cool (plants grow slow and heat is expensive) and our market so small, local producers can't afford to produce a lot of variety. There are no commercial rose producers in my area. I can get snapdragons and pansies and fuchsias and tomato seedlings, but the tomatoes need climate control to produce anything here. Clematis can be obtained from someone in British Columbia just up the road. Heat and light are cheaper in Canada. The northeastern Olympic Peninsula specializes in lavender, so lavender plants are easily obtained here in great variety. There used to be a Japanese maple producer and hybridizer in town but he retired and no one took on the business. Now our Japanese maples all have to come from the big producers in Oregon, though that's only a couple hundred miles away for us. Many local production nurseries have been lost due to increased land valuations as population grows. Urbanization surrounds and kills off nurseries just as it does agriculture in general. The nurseries that do survive do so by getting big and specializing and shipping - just like everything else.

I know that plants have innate environmental tolerances that are not affected by the climate they grew up in, so for me it's not a question of getting a plant that's acclimated. I'd like to support local producers and that's the only reason I'd insist on buying local.

Most of the grafted roses sold in the US are field-grown in an extremely hot, dry part of California or Arizona--some, I guess, in Oregon and Texas. Many of us in the East buy these by mailorder from 2000 miles away. Plants to be sold in garden centers are shipped bareroot from these western sources, potted up, and forced into growth either in greenhouses or outdoors in relatively frost-free southern locations, from which they are trucked northward for retailing.

It's only with the proliferation of boutique rose nurseries in the past 30 years or so that one has had the option of buying roses that were grown in South Carolina, the Rockies, or the Midwest. As an exception, for 50 years and more there has been a local rose industry in Florida built around the locally adapted rootstock. Way back, there were grafted rose producers in PA, NJ, and Ohio.

In the US, potted roses are generally acclimated to a greenhouse rather than to a climate. Bare-roots are "acclimated" to a cold-storage facility.

I don't think it makes a bit of difference where the rose was grown unless shipping time is an issue. Adaptation to climate is genetic.

interesting responses which touch on many thorny issues. There is an interconnectedness to everything with tendrils which reach into the global economy, small scale farming versus intensive agriculture, geo-politics , lifestyle trends. For sure, the horticulture industry in dominated by cheap dutch imports and my cosy reliance on a doorstep nursery trade may be somewhat deluded - just in a decade or so, we have seen our dairy industry plummet while the daily milkman, bringing morning milk to the door is only a passing memory for many larger urban areas. I would be devastated to lose these little murseries, with all their funny specialities, not least because of a thriving swaps thing I have going with a few of them, plus I sometimes test seeds for a couple of small seedhouses and would call many of the workers as friends. I find I buy from the same people and will always settle for a less desirable plant rather than go anywhere else. It is a bit like finding a good hairdresser - when you get one, you tend to keep them forever rather than suffer the vagaries of nightmare cuts and bad perms ever again. Mine got married and moved to Seattle (inconsiderate sod) so Mr.Camps has been wielding the scissors for the last 20 years - I take refuge in colourful ribbons.