I decided to take Gurney’s up on a coupon they sent me recently. I’d only ever ordered an apple tree from them, and I thought I’d see how their other stuff was.

Wow. It showed up this morning and was the worst example of mail order nursery stock I’ve ever seen. Not only were they small (very, very small), they appeared to have been frozen in transit. So, I open up the box, and there, in the midst of scads of plastic 2″ pots (entombed in plastic boxes, none of which I can recycle) are these pathetic little wilted stubs.

There’s a notice that says that they’ve been shipped dormant because it’s planting time. On the hope against hope that these poor things might actually recover from this “dormancy” I planted them. Clearly, they weren’t dormant when they left the place; they had leaves on them.

I don’t understand how things get that bad with a place that’s been around forever like Gurney’s. I would be embarrassed to ship such tiny, unhealthy specimens to someone wanting to be my customer. ‘Here, here’s a coupon. Give us a chance to completely alienate you.’

Given the amount of dough that I spend every month on plants and garden junk, and the quality that you can get from somewhere like Annie’s or One Green World, I hope Gurney’s enjoys that last $50 or so that I’ll ever give them.