Gardening centres rant.

Come to mention it my phormium is not looking too good. I always thought they are tough as old boots? I'll tidy it up and give it a really good feed in spring.
My winter casualty shopping list is getting longer by the day!

 

Ok my pike named friend, here's a little bit of knowledge!
Your main hobby is fish keeping, mine is gardening. Your knowledge of fish keeping will be greatly superior to mine, I've had forty five years plus of keeping plants. You've mentioned acidity/alkalinity of the water, tis the same for plants.

The only casualties regarding cordylines, are a few self seeded ones. Yes, I know I'm in a mild part of the country and yes, I know, through experience what can be planted here.
The point I'm going to make is soil type. I'm on solid chalk, approx 3 miles from the sea. 1 1/2 miles away over the other side of the downs, the soil is a claggy, terracotta/brick type clay and this is where quite a few garden centres are located. The run off from the downs makes this a damp(ish) environment through the summer, whereas I'm a chalky, grey coloured dust bowl.
An advantage I have is I have extremely sharp drainage. Great for cordylines who don't like sitting in cold and damp over winter and allows things like begonias, pelargoniums, lobelia and a host of other 'tender' plants to survive most winters.....not so much for woodland soil lovers, like camelia, magnolia, rhododendrum, hydrangea and vaccinium. I still grow these, but they survive rather than thrive and take a lot of mollycoddling. You can't blame garden centres for catering to the masses, they're not even the middlemen in the great scheme of things. They sell things that should sell quickly. Most punters just put any plant losses down to not having 'green fingers'.
Green fingers is just a term for some one who knows what conditions a plant prefers.
Oh, for the record, I hate garden centres....they're too expensive because I'm extremely tight