Good Online Nurseries and Plant Sellers

You can't beat the colours of Acers, they are stunning! And I'm still jealous.

 

But it would have to be green leaved to do that.

 

Okay, you win!

 

Anyone got a good recommendation for reliable bulb suppliers? I’m after English Bluebells; they must be non-scripta. Don’t want any contamination, this is important to me.

 

@Redwing Naturescape do the bulbs, have ordered plugs of a couple of native species from them and they seem to be of a very good quality, will be using them in future for native plants.

English Bluebell bulbs (Hyacinthoides non-scripta): for delivery September 2020 | UK Delivery | Naturescape

Nick

 

Thanks, will check them out.

 

Hi all, I've recently been experimenting with on-line nurseries and have tried the following:

Received excellent Hellebores and Hepaticas from Ashwood - would highly recommend

Bought a couple of agapanthus and a fern from crocus. I thought the plants were a but small for the prices, but they were healthy and arrived promptly so no complaints and would use again if they had something particular that I wanted.

Excellent selection of herbaceous perennials from Hardy's. Not super quick but really lovely plants arrived in fine condition - would recommend

Still waiting (18 days so far) for the bulk of my order from roots plants to arrive. I have received my free gift of 5 petunia plugs, which arrived looking slightly sorry but soon perked up once planted out. On the plus side, customer service has been very good and they quickly respond to queries.

Would like to try Beth Chatto but need to wait for all the new arrivals to settle in first!

I had included links for convenience but I've had to take them out as I'm new here - will put them back in when I'm allowed!

 

The quality seems great with Beth Chatto's Plants, bought an achillea, echinacea and salvia from them and they all did really well last Summer! Would also recommend Ballyrobert Gardens, reasonably priced, guaranteed for a year and categorised very usefully.

Proven garden plants from an RHS partner garden

Nick

 

I've bought a number of young shrubs from the RHS and although they come up slightly dearer than other nurseries, they always arrive in good condition and well packed. I won't use nurseries from around the country as their delivery charges are extortionate for the Highlands.

 

Its nearly impossible to get a courier to deliver to rural and low densely populated area's at the same cost as the UK.. The couriers impose surcharges for doing so.

Look what happened to Royal Mail some years ago, they were investigated by Ofcom for charging businesses more to use their services, with a higher price to rural areas than urban. They were found guilty and fined £50 million. Parcelforce used to offer the same fee costs throughout the country, they stopped doing that some time ago.
There has been numerous and still on going investigations about the practice of delivering throughout the UK. It has been argued that if there was to be a universal price for parcel deliveries, then those living in urban and densely populated areas would subsidize the costs to rural areas, due to the lack of volume. Its finding and implementing a happy medium to suit all.

If you buy online, then sometimes its best to buy from a chain than an independent store. A chain will have numerous outlets throughout the country and will despatch from the store closest to the postcode. They will also move larger volumes so they will get a cheaper rate than an independent store ever could.

 

I lived on the Isle of Man before moving here 4 + years ago. If we could get a delivery there it was much cheaper than the Highlands. How does that work? The RHS charge me less than half the cost of delivery that nurseries do. Again how? Plus, prices have been hiked since the virus arrived. I don't consider £40-£50 delivery charge for a plant that costs less than £10 anywhere near reasonable.

No, I've found independent stores are less likely to charge excessively to deliver here. Even Amazon and Ebay have hiked their prices and postage. I won't pay it.

 

I used to able to deliver to the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland before, Parcelforce used to have a flat rate. I also used City link, I used to have accounts with both of them. City Link went into Admin and Parcelforce closed my account as I was not hitting the numbers. I am now with FedEx and DHL, both of them are extortionate for the Highlands and off shore. If someone buys say a bag of fertiliser and asks for a quote to the Highlands, it would have to go through Parcelforce.

I have no business account with Parcelforce anymore, so I get quoted the same price as the general public do by using their website. But instead of using their website, I use an online parcel service called "Parcelmonkey"

So if I was to send a 25kg parcel from Cumbria to the Highlands or Isle of Man going through Parcelforce website, it would cost £40.00 Now if I book it through "Parcelmonkey" then the cost is £18 and it would still be delivered with Parcelforce.