Funny how a vendor that works for many people doesn't work for someone else. The Lily Garden is like that for me. And I'll probably be thrown off the lily forum for saying that , but their lilies don't do well for me. From a high number not blooming first or second year, to not wintering over as other vendor bulbs do...Guess that's why it's great we have SO MANY choices from which to feed our obsession.

Well, I find the same problems with my iris & daylilies. It's either me , my clay ground or adjusting to Iowa weather.

I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the growing conditions, right? I have extremely sandy soil, so my bulbs are never in water. I have never lost a bulb from The Lily Garden, after over 20 years of buying from them. I haven't sampled many other places, so can't say one way or another, but I'm going to change that this year :)

Barbara, no one is going to evict you, LOL. I think it's great we can all tell our experiences.

Here is where I do most of my lily buying damage (#) = cultivars not # of bulbs. Buggy Crazy wins, followed by Eflowergarden. I didn't list all the places that I have bought 5 or less of a cultivar. There are a couple on this list that I avoid now that I know better. I think Bulbmeister is out of business. I have more to enter this week that I ordered from eflower's sale and I hope to take part in the lily coop going on now through a new source for me. Patti

* AMERICAN MEADOWS (11)
* B & D LILIES (26)
* BLOOMING BULB (26)
* BRENT AND BECKY BULBS (5)
* BUGGY CRAZY (104)
* BULBMEISTER (7)
* EASY TO GROW BULBS (6)
* EFLOWER (45)
* FARAWAY LILY (23)
* VAN BOURGONDEIN (12)
* VAN ENGELEN INC (22)
* WOODEN SHOE BULB FARM (39)

Is that total you have or new this year?????

Gotta checkout a few of those sources. Have never heard of Wooden Shoe. Have gotten other bulbs from EFlower, but I have just about all the ones in that co-op so I passed on it.

Polly, thanks for not evicting me.I really want to stay!

Wooden Shoe is a retail site for Ednie. If you want the Dutch bulbs and can do 25 at a time, Ednie is much cheaper than Wooden Shoe. Ednie has a minimum order of 100.00.

Oh, please do stay, Barbara!

chocolatemoose, Not from just this year, that would be monumental! I have been keeping good records of what we have planted in the past 5 years. I had many lilies years ago, but finally the rabbits and deer decimated them, so we finally installed a deer fence around a good portion of the garden. I now can grow them again. Love them. I bought many, many through coops or fall sales. Never can have too many. Patti

Whew! I was wondering!

I haven't seen a Garden Watchdog on Cubits so I will offer my advise about Van Bourgundien.
AWFUL Service,plants ( bulbs ,dont know I stopped doing business with them 10 years ago so I am not even tempted by bulbs from them.There are too many other sources.)
Other may have good experiences with them but mine was bad.
I ordered a Oriental Poppy collection and the bare root plants that came were waaaaay undersized. 2 of the 6 were rotted and moldy. I asked for replacements and they sent half dead plants again.
My general philosophy about asking for a replacement plant from any vendor is,.
If its someone I deal with on a regular basis or has a good reputation I will accept replacements.
When its a new untried vendor I dont bother to ask for a replacement because I will probably get another dud.
I mailordered heavily last spring and crossed 3 vendors off my list due to small expensive plants that didnt thrive.
Vendors may think this callous but they should get the spam I do.

Ge1836, I mostly agree about Van Bourgundien especially for plants, except that they are one of the few, if only one, that carry one of my favorite Tulip bulbs, so I usually pad my order with a few Narcissus and lilies and other bulbs when ordering them. But this fall McClure and Zimmerman had my beloved, must have, Tulipa 'Eye Catcher ' so I may be able to avoid Van Bourgundien in the future, though their bulbs have always been way better than their plants. Plus they do have a wholesale division with good prices for bulk buying.

I almost never do replacements, I should, but I hate the hassle. I do ask for refunds for shortage, or wrong plants. I have gotten a few moldy bulbs as well as some that where just sad examples of what I should have gotten, and for those vendors, I just don't go back for more from the offenders. I post reviews in the Garden Watch Dog.

That brings up another can of worms. I have always felt that some of the way it was done does not helpful. Like allowing a lame brain to give Buggy Crazy a bad review because her site was showing that things were unavailable. Duh. I think many of us complained that an order must be submitted before a review could be given. It would be like writing a nasty negative restaurant review for a Cape Cod Clam Shack in Dec because they were closed. Double Duh!

I do like that you can click on the negatives and go read just those to see if they seem valid. But there are so many vendors listed that have been gone for years that it needs a serious update. I also wish they would code them for which have no website, or only do wholesale. Maybe a better search will be done for it by the new folks. However it is something I will continue to use and report my experiences on as I thrust many of the reporters.

I do notice that some vendors must give out something as a bonus for a good review, as many times reviews are all clustered together by folks who have just joined all at the same time and who have never reviewed any one else. That reads to me as if "Something smells rotten in Denmark" One time, I emailed admin in DG and they caught one who sent random great reviews from their own site, but with all different addresses. Dave busted them. Triple Duh! Patti

I think Garden Watchdog is the best we have, so it's useful. It definitely could use some tweaking.

Patti, I was always leery of people who signed up and then left a review the same day, until people did it for me. On the bottom of my invoice I always put 'if you have a problem with the irises, please contact me, and if you're happy with the irises I would appreciate feedback at Garden Watchdog', and people sign up, and give me feedback! I had a few people in a row do that. So, in some cases it's a legit thing. Not, of course, when it's a company with no reviews and then all of a sudden they have twenty glowing ones.

I am so dense I wouldnt think to check when the reviewer joined DG.
I suspect they are relatives.
Patti your information is so valuable.
There are only 2 garden websites I go to,not that there are dozens worthy of praise.
I really like GC and Bluestone.Brent and Beckys for bulbs and Lilies from LilyGardn and Buggy, and B&d Lilies ,Lilly nook has a great selection but way pricy unless I am desperate.
I had bad experiences with Emenince Gardens. They had a glowing review from someone who stopped at the nursery and chose his own plants. The owner sent me some that were so dried out I couldnt plant them because the roots had driedup.
American Meadows is another one .I just wont deal with them again.

I don't write up bad reviews often, as I rarely try a company with a lot of feedback that is poor. I haven't the time for it, no matter how great the deal may look. Last spring I received a very poor looking echi from a "rock star" vendor and you know, after I left feedback they contacted me personally and refunded my money with an explanation about the echi. Garden Watchdog is the only reason I heard from them. So it is something the mail order folks know that they have to do right by or potentially not get orders, or get fewer orders.

I changed my rating based on the contact from the vendor, but really, having had it be my first and only order from them, they are nobody I'd run back to. First impressions hold a lot of water!

I've gotten good bulbs from Van B. MOST were accurate. Not so plants.Horrible. I also had a problem with accuracy from Van Engelen, and they gave me a hard time about replacing the bulbs. It was asiatic lily Stones, and I had contacted them right after the lily bloomed wrong in early summer, and they said there was no problem with Stones. I sent them a picture, and then they sent me replacements, still insisting there was no problem with Stones. After the replacement bloomed inaccurate I asked for another replacement of the correct Stones, and they said they had gotten the incorrect one from the supplier, so they had none. It made me feel like they didn't trust me in the first place. Other than that I have never had any problem with Van Engelen. I can understand a mistake, no problem, but I almost felt like they were saying I was lying.

Mine were people I had never had any contact with before Jo, so it does happen, people signing up with GW to leave legit feedback.

Always best to buy anything you can from the grower.

Pollyk, good point. I think it is pretty obvious which are legit, but I usually read the good, bad and neutral so I have a good chance of getting a broad sense of the big picture about a vendor. But I have made some serious errors. Same with coop people.

I agree that it is the best we have. Could be better with some more sorting abilities. Like being able to sort reviews by repeat customers. Or have the ability to list reviews in descending number by the total number of reviews submitted by reviewer (if I have reviewed 32 total and ms.x has reviewed 15, mine would come up first) Or if you know someone always orders lilies, you could do name search to see if they had written a review for a particular vendor that you are looking at. I guess you can do that now with a Find on this Page search. Duh!

I am sure you will only get legit and glowing ones! Patti

When ordering books for my stores before retiring, I had lots of ways to sort out information about reviews which was essential to know whether they were valid reviews or Jacket blurbs. Often they were just doing it as they share the same editor, or publisher.

I don't know, maybe I'm just the odd duck here, but, I've always had great luck with bulbs I've gotten from Buggy, The Lily Garden and Faraway Flower. I've never gotten a bad bulb from any of them and they have always grown just fine for me.

I've never purchased from Buggy or Faraway Flowers. I've never heard anything bad about either. And I love The Lily Garden. You're not the odd duck, Ticker.

I was hoping to purchase from Buggy in the spring. Still hoping.

Nope, not the odd duck. Faraway is getting better and better each year and as far as I'm concerned,she started out great. She and Buggy are in a class by themselves. Polly, Buggy's bulbs are SO big and so CLEAN. Last year, I came in the house and made my DH come into the garage to look at Buggy's bulbs. He said, they were clean enough to eat!
Intention was to bite the bullet and pay the phyto to get a batch from the Lily Nook since I figured out that's where a lot of Magnolialovers are from that I've coveted, but I was so bad with FA & Buggy, I had to stop. Simply because it's not just a matter of planting them for me, they have to be dug up again in the fall...I'm rambling...

Hope we get a version of GWatchdog on Cubits some day...

I hope so too. I think we can probably make one right on the lily cubit, for lilies vendors. A plantfiles is coming, so we'll be able to file pictures in it. There's some great new things coming here.