It's Garden Shopping Review Time!

I love to shop for my garden, plants, seeds, supplies, gadgets, tools you name it! Shopping is great, and shopping online can be even better than heading to the garden centre, especially in the dead of winter. Don't get me wrong, when spring rolls around, I check every single garden centre in my area and make repeat re-con missions out of prices and quality, but when it comes to getting my winter fix, I can never resist checking out bulbs and seeds right at my finger tips.

Online Garden Shopping: Pros and Cons

Cons

Shipping and Shipping Costs; you're going to pay by the weight and protection of live plants, seeds and bulbs. They can become damaged or sick during the journey to your house.

Photo examples not meeting the description of the plants you receive. Sometimes they like to exaggerate the visual aspects of the plants and flowers. Their is also the potential for order error in the product warehouse. Often bulbs get accidentally mixed between each other when your order is being filled out.

Quality can be iffy, even for great online plant companies. You never know how a plant is going to thrive after you get bare roots or bulbs. Unlike picking out the healthiest and most vivacious plant at the nursery, someone else is doing the picking blindly for you, this could result in weak or sick plants. Quality can be amazing or very poor, its a risk most are willing to make.

Pros

Prices are typically very reasonable and you always get deals for bulk, selection specials and mix deals. Companies often through in free gifts or extras. If you spend enough, they give you free shipping too!

Variety, you cannot match the varieties available online, any plant you ever imagined can now be purchased online, in every shade of the rainbow. Including exotic and rare varieties. I always go for what I haven't seen in stores, and typically I always see something new. Sometimes I'll see something get very popular online, and the next season its in nurseries everywhere for 3x the price.

Convenience is key. With online plant shopping you can budget, plan and have it all delivered right to you. They send them at the perfect time for planting and tell you how to make the best of your order.

Online Reviews!

To help you get through the winter blues, I'll be reviewing online sites and making plant recommendations from each. I've ordered from a few sites and I was very satisfied, having purchased bulbs and seeds, I couldn't be happier. Happy shopping, don't forget, always read the reviews online!

Happy 143 Canada!

"Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them." - Pierre Elliot Trudeau

I spent Canada day at Riverside Park in Guelph. Rosalie, my grandmother lives right across from the park, with her balcony in full view of the firework action. Paula, Alain and Malin watched up stairs with Bronwyn and my mother. Aidan and I enjoyed the music, food and display with our friends down in the park. I met up with some of my best friends and we all watched the fireworks together and just had a blast, like we usually do.

If anything the last 4 or 5 months have made me feel more Canadian than ever. Tapping maple trees and making my own syrup, snowshoeing, making my own muk-luks, camping in every season, cameoing, hiking, swimming in every body of water I could get near and so much more. I'm loving the life-style I've been developing and I am ready to take it to new heights.