Home Improvement Store Nurseries

[Rosyrain]

Are the plants you buy at a place like Home Depot worse than a plant you would buy at a nursery in terms of quality? I have always viewed them as the Walmart of plants, but am I wrong, or does it not matter?

 

[Chuck]

Are the plants you buy at a place like Home Depot worse than a plant you would buy at a nursery in terms of quality? I have always viewed them as the Walmart of plants, but am I wrong, or does it not matter?

Ask yourself this. Who will take better care of the plants, last weeks burger flipper or a professional? Also what really matters is not so much the Big Box Store nor the nusery, it is the grower who the BBS and the nursery get their plants from. BBS contracts huge numbers of plants from a few very large commercial growers. Local nurserys buy from local growers in miniscule numbers as compared to the BBS. A local nursery is forced to have top quality plants free of pests and disease or they would go out of business in no time and so would the grower. Does this same criteria apply to a BBS? Sure, you can get perfectly good plants at a BBS. You can also get terrible ones too. A big difference between the two is that a reputable nursery will remove sub-standard plants from its shelves where a BBS will not, they will just mix them all together.

 

[Bandit26]

I've had good luck with some Home Depot plants. Find out when your store gets them in and shop that day or early the next day. Look at the overall quality of the plants. Do they look healthy? Too wet/too dry? Are they overly root bound, roots coming out the bottom of the pots, etc. Pull the flats totally off the shelves and pick the best plants they have and you can have good success with them. Local professional nurseries should be better, but both have a place in my garden when I need plants. This year a few things didnt take well from seed so I took advantage of the sale HD had on veggies plants early in the season and everything is doing great.

And even Walmart can have some decent plants sometimes... my climbing rose is from there and in a few years has grown to be over 15ft high, tons of flowers and great scent.

Plant shopping can be a real treasure hunt

 

[firelily99]

I generally stay away from the big box stores for my plants. There are no shortage of farms and other retail sellers that not only sell quality plants but actually know what to do with them.

 

[galmal]

I think for the regular, ordinary type flowers, the big box stores are just fine, as long as you look carefully at the plant and make sure it looks healthy. The problem that I find with them, is they don't have much selection and certainly don't carry anything "exotic" or unusual. However, their prices are a lot better, and I live in a very rural area and the nearest nursery is twice as far away. So for me, when I'm buying things like pansies, petunias, mums etc, I go to the big box stores, but when I want a nice specimen plant, I drive the extra distance and pay the top price for a nursery plant.