zuzu's blog: Jackson & Perkins

How do I hate J&P?  Let me count the ways.

1.  The website is horrible.  When you place an order, you're informed that you will get a confirmation e-mail with the order number.  You don't get one.  When you try to learn the status of your order on the website, you constantly get a message saying you can't have any information unless you provide your e-mail address.  You could enter your e-mail address (or anyone else's, just as an experiment) a hundred times and you'd still get a reply asking for your e-mail address.

2.  They procrastinate.  When you finally call to talk to a human being, he gives you a confirmation number and a shipping date.  In my case, the date he gave me was 5 months early.  I ordered five roses during the half-price sale in September.  He said they would be delivered by late October at the latest.  They arrived today -- March 19th.

3.  They pack the roses in styrofoam peanuts.  I hate styrofoam peanuts.  They're bad for the environment, and I do have the option of taking them to a mailing service center for recycling, but I have no car, and I don't relish the idea of walking a couple of miles with a bag of styrofoam peanuts.

4.  The plants are inferior.  They're packed with a nice straw cover to keep them moist, but they've obviously been traveling for a while because the new growth is pale for lack of light.  In this next photo, please notice the broken cane on the right (you'll have to enlarge to see it).

It doesn't look that much better after the straw is removed, but it actually is the best of the five they sent.  Gone are the days of big and beautiful bare-root J&P roses to mark the start of the planting season.  They now send tiny, sickly, and broken own-root roses.

These five are Shazam (the third one I've tried; J&P own-root roses are just plain lousy!), J&P Sangria, Caribbean Breeze, Raspberry Swirl, and Tropical Sun.  The last three have no registration name listed on the invoice, on the website, and in the catalog.  They're also not listed on helpmefind.com.  That could mean that J&P simply renamed some earlier roses (which I probably already have).  Grrrr!

Luckily, I bought them at half-price, but even at half-price they don't seem worth the money.  $11.37 for J&P Sangria and $9.98 each for the other four.

They did one good thing.  They sent an unexpected free gift in the package.  Ten nice engravable metal markers.  You'll have to enlarge the photo to see them in all their glory.

These five roses probably will live in pots for a long time, if not forever.  I have to use gopher cages for the roses that go into the ground, and I'm not sure these warrant the extra cost of a cage.  To paraphrase a "Seinfeld" reference, I'm not sure they're "cageworthy."  The Seinfeld thing is too risque to explain in a public blog, but you "Seinfeld" fans will know what I'm talking about.

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