Most of the plants we sell at the nursery are planted in our garden in the heavy clay soil which is either bone dry (this last few weeks) or squelchy wet (as it was for most of last year). We have some failures, everyone does but that’s partly because I try things out which are really suitable for our site. In general I would say that 90% of the plants grow incredibly well and, after a year or two, make a good show.
So I’m a bit baffled as to why some people have so many failures, especially when their conditions are more favourable than ours. Lots of customers simply can’t keep Verbena bonariensis from one year to the next let alone have borders full of swathes of this wonderful insect attracting perennial. Do they cut it down too early which halts the chance of getting plenty of seedlings the following year? Does someone hoe out the seedlings not realising what they are destroying? I can’t understand what happens. Its possible that some plants are put too closely together so a stronger growing plant will swamp something smaller. Certainly some people move things around too much so the poor plants get dizzy from endlessly being relocated. Maybe I’m just lucky.
There are many basic mistakes regularly made by a large % of the gardening public. Not watering until well-established is one. Planting a dried out root-ball of a plant is another. Then you get clients like I have who don’t get it that plants have preferences. For example, warmer climate grasses hate shade for by far the majority of cases.
Those are just a few of the common ones.
Basic gardening skills came from a past time I often feel. One in which plants were grown to augment food supplies, and also to a lesser degree for ornament. It surprises me how few have any empathy to a living plant. They need much of what we do, water, light so they can make food, a decent position, not to be swamped by neighbours/space to breath, etc.
Of course garden centres rely on the fact well over 90% of plants bought will die. Very few seem to have staff who get what a plant needs either. I am horrified at how few water their stock.
Nurseries take a different view. The customer relationship is not so much one of pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap. Nurserymen and women often grow their own plant stock. It’s very different. There is a far greater appreciation of plants and level of care.
Thanks Rob, I think I do this blog just for you because the only other responses are spam. Anyway I was partly prompted to write this because I’ve been reading another blog and this person is always moving her plants from one place to another. Consequently nothing looks established and the photos of the garden make it look bitty. I know, from talking to other people, that this is not unusual.
I do agree about dry plants at garden centres, I wonder what the percentage of waste there is.