We love the tardily deciduous Ctenitis subglandulosa ‘Hoshizaki’, which remains looking great in the garden as we pass the winter solstice. This truly elegant fern came to us from fern guru, Judith Jones, who got it from California fern guru, Barbara Jo Hoshizaki. The airy texture and ease of growth make this a fern we wouldn’t garden without. Sadly, we offered this Asian native (Bhutan through China) once through Plant Delights and very few people purchased one, so we had to discard the remaining crop…ouch! So very sorry you missed a true gem. Hardiness is Zone 7a-8b (guessing).
Dear Tony,
I don’t recall your offering these in the last few years, but I cannot understand the “discard” scenario. You have control of your website and (I hope!) it updates in “real time.” If you don’t intend to offer something again due to a tepid response, why not mark the remaining plants down A LOT? Your prices are higher than most online nurseries, and your sizes are smaller. Several items for shade were discontinued recently which had been available the day before. Were they all discarded?
You are the only source for many shade plants, such as Ruscus aculeatus ‘Elizabeth Lawrence’ for example — actually ANY cultivar or the plain species, but you don’t offer it.
Please don’t “discard” plants.
Maggie
Great question! As a business, Plant Delights has an overhead cost of production, which is used to calculate the cost per square foot per week for each plant in each greenhouse. Consequently, the nursery can only hold a plant until “x” date, before it looses money on that plant. If we see a plant is selling less than our expected #s, we always discount the plants, prior to discarding them. Perhaps we should also qualify the word, “discard”. For us, this means that the plant in question is removed from the nursery, and given either to staff, garden volunteers, or donated to an area public garden/project. You make a great point about Plant Delights offering plants that no one else offers…this is because these plants are very difficult to propagate, grow, and sell without loosing money. Plant Delights provides 100% of the financial support for Juniper Level Botanic Garden. To our knowledge there are no other operations in the US that have been able to make this work financially over a long period of time. In most cases, where this model was tried, the businesses failed to understand their true overhead costs, and consequently underpriced their plants, and went out of business. Consequently, we must be very careful not to loose money on any of the plants we offer. As for the ruscus, these are still in production…we are simply unable to meet the demand every year. Thanks for asking.