Hi Shel,
I had a horrid experience w/Parks at the beginning of the season which I wrote here, so won't go into.
From the responses it turned out some people also had awful experiences, but some had positive ones.

For me - I will never order from them.

anyway - welcome to winter sowing!

ellen

I have to agree parks doesn't have great prices on their shipping. I have ordered from them in the past and I can't say that was one of my smartest moves. Oh well I learned the hard way. Some things that I really loved and paid some good money for did not come true :( . Now I have found there are a lot of places to buy seed from without the crazy prices of parks. 5 bucks for a few seeds that are pretty common is never good marketing.

One site I happened to stumble across is T's, she has all of her packs of seed for 1.00. Shipping is less than 5.00 for up to 30 packs of seed. She accepts pay pal which is awesome if you do not like using your credit/debit card online. I made a purchase from her a while back and got 26 packs, shipping and handling all for $30.95. Which was a great deal!! She also tossed in 2 bonus packs of very pretty day lillies.

CherryGal has some reasonable prices, though her ratings are not near as good as T's and she took quite some time to send them off and get them to me also. Especially since I was only buying a few things from her compared to T's. They were more rare seeds so I was willing to pay a little extra I think I got 6 or 7 packs for 14.76 including shipping and handling. Which isn't horrible but no where near what T's offered.

My worst splurge this year was summer hills, lol. Very rare seeds only other place I have seen some of these seeds are ebay. Which I got burned there also. Some came true some did not. Anywho from summer hills I got 3 packs of seed for like 14.36 including shipping and handling. Though they did toss in a bonus pack of some hybrid dianthus that blooms all summer, which I gave to someone in the wish list swap.

Only way I even browse what parks offers now is the sale items.

Here is a link that might be useful: T's flowers and things

LOL! I got the same email at 2:32 this morning. When I tried to reply to the email, the "sent" date/time EERILY became "Fri, Oct 29, 2010 9:30 pm"!

I wrote them anyway (even though I don't want any seeds). We'll see what they say.

PV

PV- I just hit reply and the same thing showed-sent 10-29-10 9:30 PM. Nice.
Thanks for the leads for seeds carolyn. I really don't need to buy anymore this year, I spent enough buying annual seeds already. That was before I found this forum and realized there might be a better way than growing under lights...The only perennials I've started by seed were columbines, this past year. All my other perennials were bought as full fledged plants. I have saved seeds this year, but I think a lot of them are hybrids. We'll see what comes out.
This was my first year really growing perennials, actually. Previous years I stuck to mostly annuals, for the quick impact. But this year I laid in some new beds around a new patio I laid, and we removed some bushes at then end of our driveway which I then planted with lilies delphiniums sedums etc etc etc. (I spent a lot of time watering my new babies during our long hot dry summer.)
I won't be ordering from Parks after this-although I do like the way they have their website laid out. Easier than some others I've seen. I'll save my money for new canna rhizomes!

livsauntieshel - did you know you can grow some great first-year flowering cannas from seed using the WS method?

PV

I did actually. The canna seeds were the first items I picked out from Parks last night lol. I grew picasso canna this year, they got in the ground late into June and just started flowering about a week ago. We haven't had a frost yet so they're still going strong. I am looking to do a variety of heights, very tall, tall, dwarf around one side of my hot tub next year as a privacy screen. The dahlias I tried this year in that spot never grew very tall, and kept pulling their stakes down with their corn stalk stems.

Anyway- are the tall cannas available as seed somewhere? All I've found are dwarfs.

Shel - I winter sowed canna seeds this year and they grew tall as me but didn't bloom. I don't think the season is long enough for them to have flowers when grown from seed, at least not where I am so close to Z5. Grown from rhizomes, they bloom in late August and produce seedpods. I've got seeds from last season's blooms--they're yours if you want them.

Welcome to the most fun & friendly forum on the Internet!! Let me know if you want/need perennial seeds since I'm an addict and I have LOTS. As a newbie, they're yours for a SASBE. I was a newbie last year & promised to 'pay it forward' when the generous folks on this forum gifted me with seeds, so you're welcome to whatever seeds I've got enough of to trade.
Eileen

Here's the response to the email I sent to Park's yesterday (received today at 9:30 A.M.):

Thanks so much for contacting us! Your concern is important, and we're glad you took the time to write.

Please accept our apology for the error in sending the Newsletter, No hocus-pocus, just eerily FREE shipping! Due to a technical glitch the email was delayed in sending. As a result, we have extended the expiration date until Tuesday, 11/02/10 at midnight. Once again please accept our apology for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any more questions or comments, please don't hesitate to give us a call or send an email (number and addresses below). Thank you for sharing your garden with Park!

Angie
Park Seed Customer Contact Team
1 Parkton Ave.
Greenwood, South Carolina 29647
Telephone: 800-845-3369
Fax: 800-275-9941

PV

Way to go!! Still not like I am going to purchase anything I believe I have purchased enough seed.

I have already started christmas shopping for a couple of teenagers, lol. I have already put a huge dent in it also!!

pvick, is there a coupon code for the free shipping that you can share?

TIA
Bobbie

The free shipping code is:

EERIESHIP

Margaret

Tried to use the bonus code listed above and order form comes back with

"this is not a valid code"

Fran

I ordered from Parks 3 years ago, when I first started winter-sowing, and think they have a pretty good selection of seeds and also a good website with lots of info. However, they have very skimpy quantities of seed for the money - for example, I ordered Snapdragon 'Black Prince', and got 100 seeds. Sounds okay, except when I collected seed from my plants at the end of the year I was amazed that there are zillions of tiny seeds in each pod! So they could have been more generous with their quantities. Other packets, such as Rudbeckia 'Irish Eyes' had only 30 seeds and the seedlings grew poorly. I haven't ordered from them since.

I called Parks and the code cannot be used for internet orders. Strange!

I complained but the only way to take advantage of this savings is to phone in your order.

PV -thanks for following up with parks! I didn't put an order in even though they extended the free shipping, especially after molly and me's post.
Eileen- thanks for the offer! I sent you an email.

I am sooo proud of myself. I went to parks after molly and me posted that coupon. I shopped and added things to my cart, I never will deny they do have a good selection. I looked and looked at all the categories that interest me. I got done and I looked at my total, it was about 25 something. I was like hmm that isn't bad, let me see how many I got. Well then I said this may not produce true seed, so I took that one off. Then another and another. Then I said this I can find in a trade probably pretty easy, so a few more I took off. Then I got to about 5 left in my cart. I was like well this, lol will cross with another one I have and so I will remove this and that.

I managed to weed out every package I had selected. I did not buy one package!! I am so proud of myself. Though that was very very tempting!!