Totally Candid Vendor reviews
I know that in recent years a number of popular vendors have retired. New ones have come on the scene that I haven't tried. This is a candid review of several vendors based on my personal experience. I understand that others may have had different experiences. Not sure if this is the right thread for this. Apologies if it isn't.
My go to vendors:
Mid-America - high quality plants, excellent easy to use web site, allows customers to set up their own wishlist, which is very helpful during the big summer sale. Bonus tend to be fantastic new intros from Thomas Johnson. They carry many iris by other people and they sell them at a fair price. Emails answered promptly by the very busy Thomas. I've never had a problem with the wrong iris being sent but I feel certain they'd be responsive and helpful. I love Thomas iris especially, so everything about this is the GOAT.
Iris Sisters - wonderful plants, generous bonuses. They specialize in Keppel and Blyth, and now more and more the excellent creations of the owner, Robin Shadlow. Due to advancing years, Robin is carrying a smaller inventory than in the past.
Sutton: as a an active hybridizer, most of their selections are their own, but they carry a good amount of others at a reasonable price. High quality plants, excellent customer service, excellent web site that allows wishlists.
Keith Keppel himself - in order to devote himself to his creative efforts, Keith now only sells his yearly intros and very recent intros. The only way to pay is mail a check. Part of the fun is the pleasure of interacting with Keith over email - to me he is the Leonardo da Vinci of iris, so I get fan girl pleasure out of it. Of course every root is wonderful and perfect.
Next - good vendors
South Jersey Iris - they have a large selection from a variety of breeders and a lot of the older ones that their own creators may have stopped selling in order to make space for new intros. Prices are very reasonable and the roots of pretty good quality. They don't introduce their own - strictly growers. Their site is a little clunky to use, and the search function is not the best but I could recommend them without hesitation.
Stout Gardens: Not a very large collection, but they might have something you need. Now that Hugh Stout is introing his own iris, you might get one of those as a bonus - so far that has been a very positive experience.
My
list
C and T iris - used once because I was searching for something sold out everywhere else - 100% wrong iris sent. I could write more bad things, but isn't that enough?
I'm sorry to have to put Blue J iris here. They have a large selection and bargain prices. However, the iris I received looked like the old adage, you get what you pay for. Many of them had almost no roots, rhizomes were smaller than you'd get from the vendors in the praise part of my list. Two of the rhizomes looked like they'd been chewed by something. This was not amusing when one of them was not in the common $9 range, but a 2021 Johnson intro that I paid $22 dollars for. For $4 more, I could have gotten the plant from Thomas and it would have been perfect. (Learned my lesson - always buy from Thomas) No, I didn't contact Blue J to complain. They've been in the business for years. Anyone that could send something like that out - what exactly am I going to say to them? I did manage to finally obtain some hard to find plants, and that is the only reason to go there. I will do my best to resuscitate the dried up puny chewed plants and one day if they bloom it won't matter.
Now for Schreiner's - outrageous prices. I was gouged for Bravery but the borers had slain it and I couldn't find it anywhere else, and I love it so much. Assuming you don't have an obsession with an older iris of the vintage that sells for half the price elsewhere, why would you buy from these people? I hope I never have to buy anything from them again.
