Where and how to shop for your garden needs
Delaware Valley Consumers’ Checkbook shares advice on looking for the best garden center as you stock up for the season.
Gardening, already one of the most popular hobbies in America, has experienced a huge growth spurt over the last five years. Spending on gardening tools, plants, and professional landscaping remains on the rise, as more aspiring green thumbs seek to beautify their yards, connect with nature, and grow produce.
If you’ve joined the green scene, you’ll need a good garden center to sell you plants and to educate you about how — and where — to grow them. The best nurseries boast a bounty of quality annuals and perennials and employ in-the-know staff. But unfortunately, some garden centers offer lackluster goods and customer service.
To get to the root of it all, nonprofit Delaware Valley Consumers’ Checkbook collected opinions from local consumers on garden centers and shopped for prices to see which shops offer more supplies for less green.
Until June 5, Checkbook is offering free access to its ratings of area garden centers to readers via Checkbook.org/Inquirer/garden.
The opinions Checkbook collected from local consumers on garden centers reflect the great variation in quality among retailers. Some stores were rated “superior” overall by at least 80% of their surveyed customers, but several other retailers were rated “superior” by fewer than 40%.
Checkbook’s undercover shoppers checked prices at local independent shops and chains for 16 different plants, such as a lavender in a #1-size container and a knockout rose in a #3 container, and found big price differences. For example, for a boxwood in a #3 container, prices ranged from $30 to $72; and for a holly in a #3 container, prices ranged from $25 to $80.
For the limited selection of plants they sell, Home Depot and Lowe’s did very well on price.
Lowe’s prices averaged 20% below the all-store average for comparable items, and Home Depot’s averaged 19% below the all-store average. However, both chains received low ratings for the quality of the products they sell. Unlike most types of services and stores Checkbook evaluates, at garden centers, paying more does slightly improve your odds of getting better advice, service, and product quality.
Before shopping, make a plan. Consider your yard’s soil type, acidity, drainage patterns, and sunlight exposure, and match plant types with areas where they are likely to thrive. Your plan should show how your property will look right away, and how it will look years from now when your plants have grown.
Without a plan, you could wind up with an assortment of plants that do not complement each other in size, shape, or color. You might end up with shade where you want sun and with the view from, or of, your house obscured. And you might pay for expensive plants when inexpensive ones would do just as well.
Seek advice from gardening websites, friends with attractive gardens, and experts at local botanical gardens. If you want professional help, you have several options. A garden center or landscape contractor can send a designer to your place. And if you want to do your own buying and planting, you can pay a consultation fee for help preparing your own plan, or a design fee. Or get a free consultation by asking a nursery for a landscaping estimate.
You can also hire a landscape architect or garden designer to do everything, including consultation, design, assistance in selecting a landscape contractor, and supervision of plant selection and contractor performance. Or turn to this kind of company for only the consultation or the design. Your first conversation with an architect may be free; from then on, fees are set in various ways.
When making plant purchases:
Check roots to be sure they have not dried out. Probe with your finger or look through the drain holes of a container to make sure the roots are whitish, not brown.
For shrubs and trees, check for weak or broken branches. Bark should not have scars or holes, and pruning cuts should be flush with the branch or trunk.
Check plants for browned or grayed areas or spots on leaves or stems, all signs of disease. And check for insects.
In growing season, be sure there is new growth.
Get a receipt that shows the common and the Latin names of plants and the size, number purchased, date of purchase, price, and guarantee. You should also receive instructions on how and where to plant, and on what pruning, feeding, and spraying will be needed.
Ask about consumer guarantees. Fortunately, even though many plant deaths are the result of improper planting or care — in other words, the buyer’s fault — Checkbook found that most garden centers nonetheless offer broad guarantees.
Delaware Valley Consumers’ Checkbook magazine and Checkbook.org is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help consumers get the best service and lowest prices. It is supported by consumers and takes no money from the service providers it evaluates.