An Iowa Garden

What is it about mailorder nurseries? I'm not aware of any other business sector that is so testy about the behavior of its customers, and spends so much on ink, complaining about it in their catalogues. Either the people who sell plants through the mail are by nature a cranky and inflexible bunch, or gardeners are an ungrateful and demanding lot. Two of my favorite catalogues, Plant Delights and Arrowhead Alpines, always have extensive essays instructing us on how to be a good customer. I've never thought I needed anybody telling me how to behave when buying something, but after this last spring, I'm not so sure. I ordered quite a bunch of plants from Arrowhead, and as we had late snow that spring, it took a while to get them into the garden; when I finally got around to planting them, I found about ten plants missing, and e-mailed the nursery to complain about it. The next day it dawned on me that all the missing plants were dormant tubers, as opposed to potted plants, and I remembered I had put the former in a cold garage closet, rather than in the greenhouse, and had just forgot about them. Now, Bob, the owner of Arrowhead has the reputation of being the soup nazi of the mailorder nursery world, so it was with some trepidation that I called him to explain my mistake, but he was quite nice about it (though on hearing my name, he did say "Oh, you're the guy with the terrible handwriting" hey... I'm a retired doctor). Then this summer I e-mailed Barry Yinger of Asiatica, complaining that my Tricyrtis flava had bloomed purple instead of yellow, obviously being the wrong plant. He was very gracious, promising to make it good with my next order. A few days later, the tricyrtis next to that plant started putting out yellow buds, and I realized I'd just switched the labels. It will be interesting to see if anyone highlights their instructions to the customer in the catalogues they send me this next spring.