Despite doing nearly all my planting in autumn, I never come across deals of any type I might buy. Back when I was a rose fanatic, it was possible to find good deals on container roses but as I was buying bare-root cheaper anyway, I never bothered. I had a major birthday spree last year and even though many of the pots had nothing visible, the nurseries rarely drop their prices...and rightly so since it is all about roots at this time. It has been a long time since I bought from garden centres or box stores...where there are end of season bargains to be had but I find that even paying full price from independent nurseries which raise their own stock, still saves more money than buying from outlets whose customers expect to see the plants in full bloom.

You have acreage though, don't you Marquest? I had gotten to the point where I never bought plants on impulse...but only because my garden and allotment was full...but suddenly finding almost 6 acres of woodland tends to put a different slant on my buying habits. However, starting from scratch tends to mean I only buy seeds or a bulk order of bare-root hedging or bulbs by the thousand as buying the odd half dozen cheap perennials seems to make no difference whatsoever to the overall aspect. Perhaps in a few years, when I have created a few more specific areas (such as my tiny prairie edge or little 'woodland garden' patch)...but at the moment, it seems hardly worth the bother of searching out a few bargains.

If this seems to imply I am some paragon of restraint and taste, it could not be further from the truth. Whilst I am rarely pricked to buy a couple of perennials, I order seeds as though I was a demented toddler with attention span issues - just the mere mention of an interesting plant and I am off, searching through the seed suppliers or buying a single stock plant for future seed and propagation purposes. At the moment, I am filled to bursting point with rapture at finally tracking down fresh seeds of milk parsley (thyselium palustre) - a 4 year hunt to grow the sole food plants of our single swallowtail, now endemic in only one tiny corner of my county, found nowhere else in Great Britain.

Wow, marquest! That is quite a haul.

I just picked up an enormous (5.5 gallon) Goshiki false holly at a big box store for $30. I would rather buy from local nurseries, but a specimen a quarter of that size goes for $40 at my local nursery, and they are so slow growing.

At said big box store, I also got 8 small pots of dwarf mondo grass for a buck fifty each.

Yes Campunula I have acreage to cover. I try to buy low because of the animals. I try to buy things that they say are deer resistant but the deer cannot read so they eat them to the ground. I am the world worst seed grower. I do not know why but I just cannot get anything to grow by seeds.

My nursery is so close I have to pass it to go anywhere so I cannot resist stopping to see what they have. They usually do not go this low in the Fall they do 75% in the Spring from the last yr stock. I think the summer was so hot they did not sell enough so they did deep discounts now. It was so hot gardeners did not go outside unless they had to go somewhere. You could not stay outside for 2 min without melting.

Ah yes - animals. Another spiky learning curve to clamber up...and one which this very urban gardener is entirely clueless how to manage. Being a bit of a cheapskate, I would faint if I paid out $$$ (£££) for a deer snack - a whole tranche of bare-root roses simply vanished down the throats of a couple of horrid little muntjac while the voles and squirrels scoffed virtually every single crocus in one season. Carry on detailing your growing plans - so, so much better to hear from an actual gardener and not some magazine publisher or nursery owner because I am a total novice and somewhat out of my depth.

I have always done seeds from the very start of my gardening habit - once they are in the ground (as soon as possible), they are effectively cast adrift to sink or swim...and sowing them by the hundred means even startling rates of attrition still leave a satisfactory amount of plants.

Hosta - do snails and slugs not exist in the numbers we deal with in the UK? Here, everything eats them - despite an army of defences, I have never managed to keep one single hosta from looking like a drunken crochet attempt - not even those whopping Sieboldiana. Against all my own good advice, I bought (gasp) a plantaginea (those flowers...and fragrance) which was immediately eaten to a nub...so back to looking for cast-iron foliage to cover as much ground as possible.

'I have some more but cannot remember' - yep, I got that on my birthday spree and had a couple of plant fair moments. I am not an organised gardener - just a greedy, impulsive stuffer (still have unplanted pots from the summer sprees) so yep, if I actually lived within a bicycle ride to a nursery-I would crash and burn. Seeds keep me on the straight and narrow.

Seed sowing is not mysterious - I use no faddy mixes, no heats, lights, putting things in the fridge. Just sow in 5inch pots, cover with fine grit, stack outside to stratify for winter and wait till March-May. The most important thing about growing from seed (imo) is to ensure you are using viable fresh seed - this years, either swapped or saved or, if you are lucky, have a reliable commercial source (some are better than others and some are terrible). Primroses - the common p.vulgaris and foxgloves (collected from my stock plants or local cemetary)were the most reliable and satisfying mass sowings for the woodland. There will probably be beautiful native flowers which are perfect for your location and soil type. Once I could guarantee the provenance of my seeds, my success rate more or less doubled - around 60-70% across the range of species...which, by using very basic methods and sowing a wide variety, I was OK with. Even with quite erratic germination and the often stressful summer growing on (attrition just keeps on going), I was able to plant out 30-50 plants of a type in drifts and colonies - I would never do this if I was buying them as plants...and bulbs have been my top choice so far.

Campanula we have slugs but I found what worked for me many said it did nothing. But it was amazing how it worked for me. I had lace leave as you described for years. I traveled for my job and did not drink coffee but they leave 4 packs of coffee in your room a day. I would sprinkle that coffee around the plants in the Spring before they emerged and I did not get one bite from then on.

I do not know if it was because I was using top shelf coffee is why it worked. I do know the article said it had to be unbrewed coffee because it was the caffeine that did something to their nervous system. So people that used the Starbuck free used coffee grinds probably were not getting enough caffeine to work.

I like that story, marquest. Who want those little shampoos and hair conditioners when there's ground coffee to be had?

Yep, I admit it interests me (having tried and failed with the used grounds idea)...but since I never travel anywhere and am too much of a cheapskate to actually buy fresh coffee as a pest deterrent, I am continuing down the brunnera, pulmonaria, campanula, gentian and omphalodes route for evergreen, groundcovering weed preventers...even (sigh) vinca.

Interesting re coffee and hosta-eating pests.... Would green coffee beans work as well as roasted ones? The green ones are cheaper to buy, especially if you have a source of bulk beans. DH roasts his own coffee and there are quite a few stores around now that sell the green beans. Re hostas - we don't seem to have many slugs, but snails are the pest here. We do get holes in some leaves but not enough to bother doing anything to protect them. I wonder what is the condition(s) here that keeps them from being a serious pest...? Is it the winter temperatures that is the controlling factor?

I think they like moisture. Do you have a lot of rain and moisture? I had them bad they were eating the leaves almost as fast as the deer. I do not know why I keep trying to have Hostas because it is one of their favorite foods. Between the Deer and groundhogs it is a constant battle.

Marie Tulin, The soaps and shampoos I would gather up and take them to the shelters. They loved to see me coming because I would come with shopping bags of the hotel stuff. The company booked us in the HIlton, Marriots, and Four Season they had some nice stuff and the best coffee if you were a coffee drinker and it sure killed those slugs fast. LOL

Funny you should ask. Yesterday I was at Lowes - 25 miles from home - and a salesclerk told me they were going to mark down everything they had left in the garden center, to 25 cents each, starting today. And next Tuesday, everything unsold was going in the dumpster!

They had a variety of things, mostly small barberries and the like. But they did have several 1-quart Veronicas. And I have been sitting here debating if I should drive back down there today and get them. Hmmmm . . .

marquest - on average we get ~3" of rain a month from April-October. Summer is often hot and dry with rain coming in fewer, relatively heavy rainfalls, so a lot would run off in comparison to smaller but more frequent rains of spring and fall. Winters are (relatively speaking!) milder than nearby inland areas and snowfall can be quite light some years. I wouldn't think it's dry enough to seriously constrain the snails! Some years are worse than others, but even a bad year doesn't result in damage like Camp. describes - thank goodness! I wonder if a predator of some sort (birds...?) helps keep them under control...?

Nice haul!! Unfortunately, nurseries here operate year round and very few offer any kind of 'end of season" sales :-( Not even the box stores discount nursery stock significantly here. Stuff is the same price purchasing now as it would be in April!! There is just not as much of it.

Yep- exactly - even in box stores the discounts are usually still more than full price in an independent nursery. Don't think it is moisture which gives me such hosta grief - East Anglia is the driest part of the UK - we get less rain than Texas (22inches a year)...and I think Flora has the same nightmare scenarios with hostas (slugs and snails) - they are skeletal by August, although I had a victory with my sole potted hosta using my penny mulch method...but this is hopeless on the open ground.

I stopped by the nursery yesterday to pick up some bulbs. They had no red tulips left so I picked up a bag of white fosterania (? sp) tulips and, of course, hyacinths. Also purchased a dwarf Colorado blue spruce at 60% off -- still expensive even with the $$ off, which is why I try to find on clearance in the fall. There is another nursery close to my office that I'm going to check out, maybe I can pick up another one or two (have that new house to landscape, remember LOL!).

I went to the local nursery and they had a fifty percent off everything.. I excercised remarkable restraint.

I got two clematis, Honorine Jobert (white) Japanese anemone, "hot lips", a beautiful fluffy pink muhly grass, sea nettle...... and one tiny 99cent extra autumn crocus bulb (haha!).

I'll go home and update the above list to proper names.

I'm excited especially about the clematis. I love both the flowers and the adorable seed heads. It's my first foray to vines, but really, with a fence as a background, it's about time.