Posted on Jan 9, 2015 7:22 PMI received an order from this nursery on December 4th and promptly forgot about posting my review of it until I had to recharge my camera battery and discovered the photos I had taken.
I was inspired by LarryR's beautiful photo, which he entered in the ATP Photo Contest, to search for this plant on line.
I found it at Far Reaches Farm and was excited about the nursery's unique assortment of plants. Many of them were collected by Dan Hinkley, one of the original owners of Heronswood, which was regarded by many as the best rare plant nursery that ever existed. Alas, it eventually was sold to Burpee Seeds, which destroyed the nursery and its reputation.
I ordered the Ajuga and four other plants: Corydalis 'Rainier Blue,' Gentiana sino-ornata 'Stardust,' Incarvillea forrestii, and Soldanella villosa. The nursery also sent me a nice bonus plant, a Primula sieboldii, for which I am quite grateful. They arrived in a box filled with paper (no styrofoam).
The individual plants were also wrapped in paper, and the ones that were going dormant were clearly marked as such:
Inside the paper wrapper, the container was encased in plastic film and secured with rubber bands to keep the soil inside the pot. The second photo shows one of the plants after the film and rubber bands were removed.
Unfortunately, the Ajuga and two other plants were already dormant and I couldn't judge their quality, so I'll hold off on posting a recommendation of the nursery until the plants emerge from dormancy in spring.
