The US Postal Service is giving me pause. We went nine business days without a delivery then had three deliveries on the same day now we've gone two days with nothing. Apparently letter carriers are out with Omicron and no replacements are available. I'm reticent to order live plants when delivery is sketchy.

Yes!

More than once I have browsed online, put plants in my cart, and then just left the website when I see the shipping charges. Conversely, I have sometimes added a plant or two if the shipping price remains the same - I figure I should take advantage and get a few more plants without increased shipping fees. I tell myself I'm saving money in the long run.

This is with other things as well, (clothes, household goods, etc.) not just plants. And I just placed three seed orders and did indeed cut back the number of seed packets because of shipping. In one case the shipping jumped from $7 to $11.50 when I went over a certain (price) amount. I couldn't see paying $4.50 more in shipping for two more packets of seed.

I feel bad for some of these companies. I'm sure they've lost business because of it and it's not really their fault that the cost of shipping has risen.

:)

Dee

I was going to order a couple fruit trees from a west coast nursery but ultimately didn't solely because of the shipping charges.

If we're complaining about the USPS, it's now 4 weeks since I've gotten an issue of The New Yorker and for the very first time, no issue of The Week this past week. The problem with the New Yorkers has happened before--last May I hadn't gotten an issue in 5 weeks and I finally emailed them and canceled my subscription. I'm 76 and I've been reading the NY all my life (my mother got it and I read the cartoons years before I read the articles) and really didn't want to cancel. The next day 5 issues arrived and I canceled my cancellation.

The post office has no explanation whatsoever. I do. His name is DeJoy.

Us rabid perennial gardeners are stuck between a rock and a hard place these days and going forward as there hasn't been a year that's gone by in the last 5 years where at least one quality "brick and mortar" nursery has gone belly up :(. And so more and ore the only option to get a 'special' plant is to do it by mail order.

...where at least one quality "brick and mortar" nursery has gone belly up."

They're not all going belly-up; some are closing because the owners chose to retire. That happened to two specialty nurseries around here -- while it was saddening to see them close, I was happy for the owners. Another one, the infamous Hallsons Gardens, closed because the owners moved to Ireland -- those guys were great, and I have fond memories of them and the day trips I took with people out there, but how could I not be happy for them that they're living their dream?

Nope you are right. I didn't make any distinctions as to why nurseries are closing as the end result is the same for me ie I am "forced" to look further afield for plants I want and this means mail order and so I may have bite my tongue with regards to shipping costs.

I'll admit I'm spoiled -- I live within driving distances of some absolutely top-notch nurseries, I can find pretty much anything I want/need if I know where to look, only rarely do I resort to mail order except for seeds. I realize that is not the case for all areas of the country (or Canada) and I am fortunate in that regard. But yea -- agree the price of shipping is getting ridiculous. I paid $11.50 shipping for seeds. SEEDS!!

Yeah, mxk, I had the same reaction to the cost for shipping seeds (same price too - $11.50 - which is why I cut two packs from my order to bring the shipping back down to $7.50). I keep thinking, seeds are so light, can't they throw them in a couple of letter/business-sized envelopes, stick a forever stamp on them, and mail them out? Even if you need 4 envelopes for the whole order, the postage is still about $2.50! At that price I'd even pay them for the envelopes and the address labels lol. They'd be going first-class mail and I'd still come out ahead!

:)

Dee

I figure it's to pay the cost of the labor to pick, box, and label the packets, not solely the cost of the postage. But still -- picking, boxing, and labeling 5 or 6 packets of seeds doesn't take that long.

If anyone is looking for vegetable or annual seeds, any order over $30. has free shipping for seeds @ Fedco Seeds.

Thanks all for the replies, seems many of my personal friends are now forgoing the sourcing of mail order plants, at least from places with exorbitant shipping. Yes, and currently the mail certainly is moving very s-l-o-w-l-y, my Swallowtail order took 9 days going between Santa Rosa and Los Angeles!

If you're really set on certain plants ONLY available via mail order, then just gotta bite the bullet or possible have a friend order along with you. Life is short, I have few vices and indulgences and one of the biggest things I look forward to is my gardens coming awake in the spring and those big boxes of plants that arrive! I tend to lean to the perspective that I'm getting plants I want and often these arrive right to my acreage door! I'm not having to drive far and wide from nursery to nursery in at times busy traffic, but thank goodness for the freeway ring road that now circles the sprawling city ... but, all it's masses of overpasses in places is like an intimidatingly big bowl of spaghettis! NOW, though, will I order up those clematis or not, certainly is other ever increasing bills to pay as well! :(

Yup, paying for shipping is big deterrent for plantaholics. I frequently shop on Etsy where smaller businesses provide a good price and often waive shipping above a certain amount for an order. I have bought Clematis from a seller in Dakotas and seeds from a seller in UK!

getgoing, that's interesting. So you've had good luck with that? I'm always a bit hesitant to buy from places like etsy. Are you buying from small commercial businesses that sell through there, or private people just selling stuff (like gardeners selling extra plants, etc?). Sorry if this is a dumb question. I admittedly have not done much shopping on etsy, and never even thought of it for plants or seeds. I'm going to go take a look now actually!

:)

Dee

Dee, too bad even smaller plants sold in multiples are harder to come by. Here in Canada, Lindenberg has been a good source for me. Last year, I noted an uptick in pricing, but was very pleased with the beefier plants and divisions. They have a decent listing, though often only a few varieties of certain things, yet one can at times snap up some of the newest releases! It's great receiving really decent plants for about $7.00 rather than paying nearly three times as much for a one gallon pot, but not knocking those when it comes to slower to establish plants.

Dee, i have mostly bought from sellers who are selling hundreds of products and have pretty good reviews in the thousands. I bought seeds from happygreeshopseeds and clematis from Bakerybetty, orchids from orchidnick. Seeds were plentiful with good germination resulting in pretty good quality plants. Clematis had good roots, are doing well but slower to get to maturity than bagged plugs off lowes or walmart. The orchids (cattleya) had mostly rotten roots and cosmetic damage on leaves but I got them cheap and were larger than expected so I would call it even.

Thanks, gg, for that info. I will definitely have to look into that route. I usually stick to nurseries that get good reviews on Garden Watchdog, but am always open to places which have been recommended personally as well. And now that I think of it, I do suppose there are always reviews attached online to anyone selling anything lol! Thank you!

FB I used to love the way Bluestone operated. They were such a great place to deal with. Fantastic customer service, and good quality (if small) plants for amazingly reasonable prices. I built most of my garden with their plants. They're still good - not knocking their quality or customer service - but it's so hard to pay the prices they want now. They're actually in all fairness pretty comparable to other online nurseries, but I guess it's just that I was used to such better pricing from them lol. What I hate (and I'm in no way saying Bluestone does this, just saying in general) is when you pay for, say, "gallon" or even "quart" pots and it's really just a plug planted in a gallon or quart pot! I just looked at Lindenberg but unfortunately they are not shipping outside Canada at this time.

Going forward I'm focusing the next few years on my foundation beds as well as planting more shrubs, so I will likely buy those locally anyway. Broken Arrow, which I mentioned above, is a good local nursery with reasonable prices so for the shrubs I'll probably make a few trips over the next year or two. With shrubs (as opposed to perennials) I do like to get things a bit on the bigger side.

:)

Dee

Yes, what a peeve when places up pot tiny plugs into gallon size and immediately send them out for sale. Has occurred to me many times, go to plant the thing out and ALL soil surrounding the plug falls free. Paid over $30.00 with tax and shipping for a 'Princess Kate' clematis stated as one gallon 2 year old ... yikes, it was pathetic tiny and when I enquired of the nursery owner of the honesty behind its claimed size, I was basically given a too bad so sad response, come spring will see if has even managed to survive!

Same here, so very seldom have I purchased shrubs via mail order, of recent years can only think of having done so with the orange double flowered 'Lady Marmalade' potentilla and sure glad I did, the bloom color is sensational! Speaking of double potentilla, 'Citrus Tart' is a nice yellow in that category, I picked it up a local nursery as I again do for the vast majority of shrubs. Canadian Tire, despite what its name might suggest, has very good nursery lots, one of them about 40 mins from me is the biggest of all their lots in Canada, I wish it was just a bit closer, I'd be there all the time!! Oh, and my local Home Depot has also really stepped up their game with a substantial lot stocked season long!

Absolutely yes. Now, having sold online, I am very well versed in increasing shipping costs, especially in Canada, and what goes into handling. But sometimes…last year I was obsessed with this fritillaria bulb I could only find online in Canada at one place, again from a west coast dealer. The bulbs were expensive, I think maybe $25 each, but okay. I thought I could splurge for 2 = $50…SHIPPING WAS $40!! I debated about it, but just could not justify spending that.

All worked out in the end though. A few months later my friend alerted me to a bulb wholesaler within driving distance that would actually sell to the public - I actually was able to buy the bulbs in bulk, worked out to $8 each, and picked them up myself from the warehouse with no delivery charge.

@FrozeBudd - funny, a few years ago I was obsessed with Princess Kate clematis as well. Same story, only a few places had it and they were all online, but there was one place about half hour drive away that had it which allowed pickups. I ordered a 1g clematis and another small additional plant - when I got there, they had the clematis but the other plant they had sold out of so they had replaced it with a larger size and charged extra on my credit card - without my permission! As you can imagine, I was not happy with that one, but they insisted they were within their rights to do so. (I ended up calling the credit card company and they refunded the excess which the company charged). The funniest thing was the following year I saw Lowes was selling loads of 2kg Princess Kate clematises for much cheaper than what I had paid the previous year 😂

Yes, after dishing out a whack of dough on the most pathetic mail order clematis I have ever received, I did see where Lowe's had stocked 'Princess Kate' earlier in the season, too bad for missing out on one of those instead! Otherwise, all too many wonderful new plants I'd like, but gosh as most everything else, prices sure have crept up and shipping that can be 1/3 to even half the total price of plants!

Calculating shipping costs per number of plants or weight is of course much more fair than basing as percentage of plant price ... heck, why would a plant at $16.95 be more expensive to ship than that of an identical size and weight higher value specimen, sure seem like an easy cash grab otherwise then!

In the past it would often come to pass that many of the perennials that I mail ordered I would eventually see at a brick and mortar nursery later in the same season of course for lots less! But it is hard to be patient.

Still eyeing up some clematis plants from a Canadian west coast supplier, but if these weren't expensive enough already, adding about $10.00 each shipping takes individual plants to a whopping $45.00 and beyond with tax ncluded .... mmmm, two clematis for nearly $100.00 ... that feels a bit like robbery! :(

try Brushwood for clematis!

^^^^Doesn't help our Canadian plant ordering friends. They don't ship to Canada (lots of US mail order sources do not ship to Canada either).

Yeah, really great free trade between the countries, lol. Had received nice plants from Joy Creek years ago and an eastern US nursery before it had gone out of business.

I have good experiences with USPS . Last summer I ordered from Digging Dog Nursery, and it took some persuading on my part for them to agree to ship USPS due to their experience with slowness of USPS. Thankfully, my order arrived in well under a week (CA to AK). When my bluestone order came in 2 summers ago I had the best chat with our mail carrier ever. I'm saddened to hear about USPS not being reliable for some of you and I hope that changes - I think there's a bill introduced in congress help the USPS, fingers crossed.

I recently received seeds from Bakers, rareseeds.com - free shipping using USPS and it arrived within the week (beans, peas, and interesting-colored nasturtiums).

I have used ebay and have had good luck there. I currently have seeds for Rhododendron lappoinicum that were shipped from Russia using ebay. This is also called lapland rosebay which is native to Alaska but I haven't been able to source it here, and I hope I can get them to germinate. (I've germinated rhododendrons before from master gardener sale after their China trip, although they didn't make it in the end.)

It's always a treat to shop locally and find interesting perennials, but if you have your heart set on a particular one that's not common locally (thanks Perennials forum! ) then mail order is the way to go. High shipping cost is a drag but for me it's sometimes the case that they won't ship to Alaska at all! - that's 'a gut-punch ouch' at checkout, lol ). So maybe I don't mind paying higher shipping, depending on how badly I want the plants. The catalyst for my Digging Dog order was that they had the thalictrum flavum spp. glaucum that I just had to have and by including enough other plants the shipping was reduced to about $30 via USPS (maybe half what UPS would have been). So, I got to have a fun time shopping, reduced shipping but more plants than I was really looking for.

This has gotten me thinking about native plants more, they're hard to come by commercially up here (other than lovely but more common ones - lupines, geraniums, monkshood, columbine etc), and many are tricky to start from seed. A whole different topic, though.

I wanted to order from two places: 1 on the west coast, shipping was 50$ for 5 plants, and the other one (neighbouring province) could not confirm shipping costs at this point, but said it would be a minimum of 85$...for 6 perennials.

Thanks but no thanks.

Here is a place that ships free. Their inventory is limited but I got two camellias from there, both pretty healthy plants shipped nicely. New Life Nursery and Garden / Mail Order Garden Center (newlifenursery1.net)

Lat62, yes, free shipping is much appreciated, even if one must spend a minimum to obtain such, sometimes I've gotten in on a Black Friday special. The Rhododendron lappoinicum looks like a real gem, something I should also try considering my far north location and decent reliable snow cover. I have never used Ebay or such for plants, but obviously there must be some very reputable vendors.

Yes, I agree if one has their heart super sent on something and yet the shipping is outrageous, then it's okay to bite the bullet ... well, as long as passing by the plant doesn't always evoke sticker shock regret, lol.

Mazerolm, that particular west coast nursery has many plants I'd like to obtain, but checkout prevents me even after much reducing the number of plants. I actually had emailed regarding such and hinted of higher sales sure to come their way if shipping was reduced ... the response ... "No, we will not absorb any shipping costs in order to boost our overall sales!" ... well, other places are much more accommodating at least in some regards.

Getgoing100, you'll have to post photos of your camellias when they arrive! I can't grow them in my climate, though did have several in the past grown within a large glasshouse.

85$...for 6 perennials, now that's just painful !!