High Country has a plant finder but since their inventory is tailored to the west it doesn't help me much ;)

Annie’s Annuals based in NoCA has a plant finder feature on their website and they do offer mail order. It’s an amazing nursery!

I, of course, am perfectly happy browsing text only catalogs that may or may not offer links to photo even. So..no, that does me no good what-so-ever.

how long have you been gardening.. that you haven't developed some innate ability to do this yourself.. in your garden.. in your soil.. wherever you may live???

the only plant finder i ever used .. albeit back before the WWW .... was visiting EVERY nursery in metro detroit within 20 miles of my house ... if they didnt sell it.. i presumed it wasnt zone appropriate ... nor able to withstand a MI winter ...

unfortunately many of the local nurseries were run out of business by the WWW but luckily i dont garden anymore ... so i doesnty matter to me .... and i really dont count bigtboxhardware store as a nursery ...

ken

For native plants: Izel Plants

For many, many plants but mostly perennials: Sandy's Plants has both a plant finder, and a 'plants for this sort of situation' feature.

Seed sites can be outstanding in this respect Violet. Check out Jelitto, Chiltern Seeds, Special Plants, Seedaholic. Some of them have detailed cultivation advice.

I like rosaprimulina's suggestion of these quality seed sites.

I often refer to them for germination information, though in some cases, even they don't know *lol*. But they're the best that I know of.

I use monrovia.com frequently to explore plant ideas. Most of the plant nurseries in my area sell Monrovia plants.

'even they don't know'...so offer up the same, vaguely non-specific recipes for germination for pretty much every plant - PlantWorld are terrible offenders in this respect, despite offering a truly broad range of plants.

Seedaholic used to include a really interesting information sheet which included historical and cultural references - Brexit has led to some annoying restrictions such as ordering auricula seeds from Barnhaven - grrrr.