Garden centres and plant wastage

My local garden centre is part of a nationwide chain (no names mentoned ......... yet) and the other day I stumbled across an area out the back where all of their unsold plants are left on their mobile tray racks ready to be unceremoniously dumped in a waiting skip.

The amount of waste is horrendous - there are a lot of perfectly good plants there, many of which only need watering. These will just end up in a skip.

I spoke to one of the staff about this and he commented that he agrees that it's terribly wasteful but that it's an order from the centre manager - apparently if they just give away unwanted plants then they wont sell any new ones. I can see the point (to a certain degree) but the number of people who would take on unsold and "past their best" plants must be minimal compared to customers who just want plants that look their very best. Besides, why not just operate a scheme where each customer (who buys something) can take away an unsold plant for free?

Has anyone noticed similar plant wastage at their local garden centre?

 

Homebase used to give away poorly plants, and continued to do so in the early days following their new ownership, but this year they've been cramming plants (that are now far more expensive) onto multi tiered trollies with insuficient light and watering, and they've been growing spindly, pale, and dying. But they then leave hundreds/thousands of rubbish plants for sale whilst cramming in more and more new stock, making the situation even worse.

B&Q have some bargains if you carefully select the plants, Wyevale are expensive but their stuff has always been the best quality.

 

I think the wastage at the big GC's and the Supermarkets must be huge . There are so many places selling huge amounts of bedding plants , I can't imagine where they all go.
I find that our B and Q , and Asda have pretty good quality plants Which are looked after to a point. Now Wilkos is another story

 

I don't agree. I have bought full price plants from them and they have died despite me trying to do the best for them. I am not a novice gardener. Sometimes their plants are forced and do not survive normal garden growing conditions, IMO. I'm talking about shrubs. Their plants are overpriced compared to my local family run nursery.....full price that is. It is my opinion that they get in many more plants than they know that they can sell at the full asking price; consequently much is left unsold and is then sold off later at knock-down, sometimes extremely knock-down prices. They have no facilities for potting things on, growing them and looking after them properly until they do find a buyer.

Having said that I do buy from them....just not at full price. When plants outgrow their pots and are obviously past their prime sell by date, there are bargains. That's when I am a good Wyevale customer. I have had some very good bargains from them which given TLC have done well.

I know someone, a friend of a professional gardener friend, who works at a recently taken over by Wyevale which was a privately owned GC/nursery. She says that plants arrive in bulk unannounced and suddenly they have to find space for thousands of plants. Lorry loads full! Panic! What to do? I honestly think that Wyevale is run by marketing people, not horticulturalists, who only care about selling and profit and not about the plants. Just my opinion and I am sure people will disagree.

 

No independant nurseries around here any more, but when there were, they simply potted stuff up and quadrupled the price I could've bought the same size plants for in a multiple tray at a mainsteam garden centre and done it myself for only a few pence per pot. And for the avoidance of doubt, they didn' even bring them on until the roots filled the pots and the plants grew a bit. No wonder they failed and are no longer trading.

 

Wyevale here sells terrible quality plants as well, prices are literally 3/4x more than my nearest GC

 

My local small GC is excellent. Had some fantastic bargains-namely a clematis for £14.99....exact same in wyvale for £45.99.

 

£45.99 for a Clematis !

 

£14.99 for a Clematis !


I'm glad we've got a The Range, plus mail order .

 

With supermarkets, unsold food is collected by food banks to be distributed to those who can't afford to feed themselves properly. Perhaps the same should be done with unsold plants, in other words we need a "plant bank" organisation which collects unsold plants and distributes them to people who simply cannot afford to buy them.

Unfortunately this probably won't happen unless the wasteful garden centres are named and shamed in the media, but with all that's going on in the world these days are most people really going to be worried about wasted plants?