Could well be. It was looking for a buyer a while back. Their quality doesn't seem affected.

Here's the acquisition info. This was subsequent to their Chapter 11 filing.

Gardens Alive acquires Iseli Nursery

It's true what they say about Iseli. Great plants and service. Staggeringly consistent quality.

Guess I've had my head in the sand as I had not heard about this until a few days ago. And it looks like some of the mail order brands could be offering some Iseli selections. I wonder if they advertise their Iseli offerings?

The latest shipment I've seen at the local nursery was better than past years for some reason. Close to perfection actually.

I just hate their medium. It's damn near hydrophobic. I have to bare-root everything I buy from them.

"...have to bare-root..."

The average gardener would never bare-root, but simply buries the root ball in the planting hole, and the plant would presumably survive in most cases.

Care to elaborate on the need to bare-root?

Any guesses why they use the particular medium?

I'm sure that they use that medium because it is their best attempt to optimize cheap, fast-draining and light. Cheap for obvious reasons; fast-draining because that way unskilled workers can water every day without having to check, and light because that means ease of handling/transport and less weight which once again is less expensive.

Many nurseries use similar medium (Youngblood uses a medium that is almost pure wood - I really hate that one) but for some reason Iseli's is, for me, one of the worst. This may be because we have no summer rain and I irrigate mostly by drip. I plant almost exclusively in November and December so that the plants have some time before the dry season, which begins in April. If I don't bare root the plants in very woody, hydrophobic medium, when the rains stop and the irrigation goes on, the drip doesn't wick into the root ball sufficiently.

In a perfect world I would love everything that I planted to be either bare-root or field-grown but there are all kinds of reasons why that can't be. So we make due with containerized stock and then have to fight those battles!

That very barky mix is what I like about western conifer vendors!! For any container gardening, this is a preferred media and since I grow virtually all my conifers in containers, the fact they are already growing in a very bark potting soil means I don't need to bare root to remove an inferior soil before planting. I guess it depends on one's focus and point of view as to the benefits or not of bark-based container stock.

FWIW, bark based soil should not be hydrophobic. Bark can retain a good deal of moisture if properly hydrated. I would have to assume the media was allowed to dry excessively before planting and it is very difficult to rewet or fully rehydrate any sort of dry media once in the ground.

Gardengal, I agree, for container-growing that kind of mixture is fine. And as I noted, it is the 'rewetting' from drip irrigation that is problematic. The hydrophobia comes from drying out totally. The only way to successfully rewet at that point is to completely submerge the root ball in water (the way retail nurseries often have a bucket of water that they just drop a dried out container plant into for a bit to rewet). Not possible in the ground with drip irrigation. Some barky mix rewets more easily than others; Iseli's is the one that I have the biggest problem with.

As with liberal amending of planting hole backfill a problem with coarse potting media being left on plants at final planting time is the textural difference between this and the finer textured natural soil around the small planting hole or undisturbed original root ball. This is because fine textured material has a greater attraction for water than coarse textured. Planting intact root balls still often works when plants have enough vigor at planting time to root into surrounding natural soil before significant drought episodes occur. Otherwise plantings can struggle or even fail.

Another reason to bare root at planting is to discover and address deformities due to plants being kept too long in small containers at production facilities, at one or more stages of the production cycle. Woody container stock presented at retail outlets here very often has bound, circling, kinked etc. roots. Especially grafted material including garden conifer cultivars.