I also wonder how long some of those plants have been in their containers in the big box stores. The problem is figuring out who is a reputable mail order nursery anymore. Years back, most of them grew most of their own stock. Now they re-sell from mega nurseries. We have no way of knowing the timeline from grower, to seller, to buyer anymore. A few years ago, I ordered bare root strawberries from Jung (which has never disappointed with seeds). What arrived was on the way to compost: dried out, moldy, completely dead. They replaced the entire order and THAT batch looked good and are doing great. Be vigilant about returning dead stuff and asking for replacement or refund. I bought grape vines at Lowe's (in those long little cardboard boxes that you can't see the whole plant) that were rotting and moldy when I got them home. I took them right back, got a refund, and told the manager he should send back the entire display to the wholesaler for a store refund. Who knows how many people also bought these dead plants? Maybe that's the trick: Don't buy a plant unless you can examine the WHOLE plant, roots and all.

My friend Jill was not so sure about Park Seeds, but they were the only source that I could find where 'Seascape' wasn't already sold out. I ordered once from them years ago, but it was for seed starting supplies, not plants. Although I'm not sure what bare roots should actually look like, I could tell that in comparison they were much more robust than what I got in those box tubes at Tractor Supply and Lowes. My previous experience with bare root wasn't good - a wholesale purchase from ADR where some of the Mid Atlantic group gets our fall bulbs year after year. Not a single one of them did anything at all, and ADR refunded the money. I think it was an experiment that they were trying out that year and discontinued, or discontinued from that particular supplier. I've always bought my perennials "in the green", so growing from bare roots, or even seeds for that matter, is something new for me.