Make Time to Visit Your Local Plant Nursery

A plant nursery is a business that can provide the home gardener with not only the plants they want, but also helpful advice on choosing and caring for those plants once they have them home. Many plant nurseries also provide other products such as greenhouse equipment, fertilizer, compost bins and other requirements for the garden. Some nurseries however specialize in supplying plants only, and may specialize even further, providing only natives, or other specific types of plant such as bonsai, cactus or aquatic plants.

Nurseries can also act as agents for seed companies, so as well as supplying full grown plants and seedlings they will also sell seeds for the gardener who wants to try and grow things ‘from scratch’. The range of plants that can be grown from seed is almost infinite and only limited by your preference, time and region.

Some plants can be susceptible to cold, and difficult to grow from seed in temperate climates. A determined gardener can overcome this by either propagating the seeds in a planter box inside or in a greenhouse. Your local nursery should be able to supply you with the required equipment and information, or there are many companies that sell via mail order or the internet that can send you what you need. It is also now possible to contact the seed company you are interested in directly via their company website.

While the internet and mail order may be convenient for many gardeners, especially in remote areas or looking for rare plants, there are still many advantages to visiting a nursery. Along with one-on-one advice, you have the advantage of assessing the plants before you buy them, so you can check for health and a lack of disease. One warning – plant nurseries can be addictive, and you could find yourself spending every weekend searching for that new plant variety that you don’t have in the garden yet!

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