Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. — Attraction in Garner

I recently visited Plant Delights Nursery and the Jupiter Level Botanic Garden on a very hot humid day during one of its open gardens weekend. Hundreds of people were visiting. The number of people visiting stunned me considering the heat and humidity. Some people shopping for plants but not a lot.

Lots of parking. But only four handicapped parking that I found. Gravel parking lot. One way access so you need to pay attention to the signage to find your way out. Not hard; just follow the signs. See my review for the botanic gardens.

I stopped in to avoid the very high shipping costs when buying plants via mail order. Plant cost is high. But remember, these are rare and unique plants that are difficult or even impossible to find any where else including mail order. Most of their plants are not going to be found at a big box store or your local nursery. I walked around the several green houses with a huge selection of these rare and unique plants. Virtually every plant I saw were in excellent health. And they are mostly quite large for 3.5 inch pots for the most part. A few plants might be found in larger pots. So unlike most mail order operations who send 3.5 inch pots, these are well developed plants that are nearly root bound or are root bound. Very strong and healthy and complete root systems. Not starter plants with small and immature root systems that most mail order companies send. Being root bound is not necessarily a bad thing. When replanting, just spread the roots out. More roots is BETTER.

I went to purchase a variety of Aspidistra plants that I want to plant in a very shady area. I purchased 8 plants. And it was great to purchase the best looking and largest of the plants using my discretion instead of some plant picker picking a mail order. Selection was difficult because they were all healthy. Plant trays and pull wagons are available to collect your plants.

Check out mid day was quick and easy. 4 checkout stations with tables were available under a tent. The system was well designed.

Also, a shout out to the volunteers manning the visitors tent. I was looking for a map of the gardens and where I could find Aspidistra. A volunteer stepped up and greeted me asking if I had any questions. He gave me a map and pointed me to the shady plants and the greenhouses. I asked if he knew which greenhouse contained Aspidistra and he quickly got a binder and told me to go to Greenhouse #6. Wish I remember his name to give him a shout-out. But there were lots of volunteers around to assist people. I also saw a food truck, Beer tent and a gift tent.

Great place to buy rare and unique plants. Only four weekends a year to buy. I strongly encourage taking advantage of these buying weekends to avoid shipping costs and the freedom to pick the plants you want. Lots of staff to answer...

Initially pleased but now very disappointed. My mother and I are avid gardeners and visited Plants Delights for the first time March 7 of this year. We found some unusual (hard to find) plants we liked and I purchased $654 worth of plants (I'm sure my mother's bill was several hundred dollars at least). We specifically asked about when we could put the plants in the ground, given the unusual weather we'd been having and were told by someone who seemed very well informed and seasoned that we could put anything we had purchased (she looked through our wagons of plants to see everything we had) in the ground "now" (meaning March 7) as they were perennials and would be fine. I planted all of the plants I purchased within 2 days of purchase in very good conditions.

Since then, both my mother and I have several items that were killed, probably in one of the cold snaps we've gotten, and also several items that just never came up at all. My mother has been online chatting with Plant Delights and apparently their policy is not to replace items that have already come up and then die, despite the fact that the only reason we put the plants in the ground in the first place was that we were assured they would fine by the people at Plant Delights (I say this because I still had all my tropicals indoors and had not yet put them out).

This is not a policy of a reputable nursery, particularly if customers are paying $13 and up for 4" pots of what appear to be nothing too impressive in the early spring. Incidentally, we didn't even want our money back, we just wanted to replace the plants, which would have cost them virtually nothing. I spend literally several thousand dollars a year in nursery items (it's a bit of an obsession) and my mom spends quite a bit as well -- this was a really pathetic way to lose two customers who would have been happy with just a few replacement plants. These interactions have demonstrated really poor judgement on their part, and again, this policy is not consistent with other reputable nurseries (like Homewood in North Raleigh for example) who stand by their plants and care whether their customers...

Our experience was awful. We bought more than $500.00 in plants last summer and we asked for perennial ever green plants, they even said that a "Super Helen" was a plant that always remains green, pointed a few more that we bought and we add lilies that are dormant in winter. The surprise was in winter when ALL our beautiful garden looked dead. We called and they asked for pictures to verify if we had our plants in the right area and for their surprise we had them in the right place and mulched, they said that we had to wait until spring because they will need to know which of the plants really died and which will come back in spring. We waited and the answer in spring was "don't worry, we have explained your case to our specialist, come and he will be able to help you. We wasted our time, they apologized and said that they don't guarantee any of their plants, even if they died. Very upset we called and the customer service person who had our case, and she answered with promises of finding out what had happened and call us back. It NEVER happened, never a phone call and when we called they never answered again. VERY DISAPPOINTED. The only plants that survived were the lilies and those had holes that we discovered is a problem they have there in their green houses. ...