Garden Centre Recon I

Now that I've had my smart phone for a while, it's the perfect time to use it like and garden spy and record what I've found at local garden shops and centres. Take a look at my late April, early May finds!

 The "Ontario Natives" plant stand at Zehrs in Guelph.

I saw this stand outside of Zehrs one day and I absolutely love this! For $3.99 you can have a small biodegradable Ontario native plant. They are very small, but the pricing is just right, garden centres pump up the prices of native plants because "they can" and they can be hard to propagate, not to mention the fines for removing some native plants. In this selection they have a great mix of forest and meadow dwelling natives; white, yellow, light pink and red trillium. Violets, blood root, ferns, cone flowers, foam flowers, false solomon's seal, and jack-in-the-pulpit. Unfortunately I waited too long to see if it would reduce, and when I returned they had some serious slim pickings left. The nicest looking plants left was a foam flower with lots of new growth (very important) and flowers. I took it home and popped it in a nice space in my shade garden.

I also took some photos of the rest of the President's Choice plant stock.

What I think is nice about this brand and stock is that they like to carry the "fads" of the garden world, they bring the special garden centre selects and only carry them. I like this because it brings really interesting plants to the eyes of beginner gardeners and lets people try something new. I don't like this because it means they can and will inflate the prices. They prices are not terrible, but they certainly aren't deals. I'll check back at the end of June for the clearance sale. 

Costco Bags of Bulbs. Great Prices, great quality, looks like a nice selection.

I bought a bag of giant lilies and a Dahlia mix, about 15 bulbs in each bag, each bag $12.99.

I found these beauties at Home Depot. Home Depot tends to have the best deals. Creeping Speedwell "Goldwell" and Sedum "Autumn Charm".