Now it's time to name the worst nursery, and this one wins hands down.
I defended Hortico against its detractors for years, putting up with the occasional mislabeled rose because one e-mail would correct the problem and I'd quickly receive the correct rose or a refund. They carried the largest variety of roses and the bare-root plants always looked good. I still have hundreds of Hortico roses thriving in my garden.
A few years ago, however, they started sending out deplorable plants and listing roses that weren't available at all. If I ordered 20 different cultivars, I could be certain that 12 of them would go on "back order" (which meant I would never get them, even after waiting for years), 3 would be mislabeled (and in the most callous way: sending me Iceberg climbers and dull pink rugosas instead of the fairly rare hybrid teas I was ordering), 4 would be dead or dying, and only 1 rose would be viable and would prove to be the rose I had ordered.
After a couple of really lousy orders, I asked for replacements and refunds. They jerked me around for more than a year, during which I communicated with four different customer service representatives, all of whom promised to send replacements, but none of whom did. I finally wrote to the main offices, detailing my earlier correspondence, and requesting replacements for 6 dead plants, 2 which were listed on the invoice but were not in the shipping box, and 4 mislabeled roses. I did receive a box of 12 roses shortly afterward, but 10 were so dead that they must have been put in the box as a nasty joke. The other 2 were rugosas instead of hybrid teas.
I wrote them off, deciding not to waste any more time on letters of complaint. They do have an impressive assortment, but what's the point of ordering roses if they're not going to be the ones you want or if they're going to be dead on arrival?
