A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon an online distributor of Native Florida Plants... or, more pointedly, Native plants for much of the US, but with a seemingly Gulf Coast region focus. The growers are based out of Lee Co. Florida and the business is called Mail Order Natives. I did a bit of searching online for negative reviews of this business, but couldn't find any. I did find some positive reviews, but couldn't find anything suggesting negative experiences. Finally I broke down yesterday morning and ordered a 1 gal Sparkleberry and a 1 gal Wax Myrtle. Rather surprisingly, UPS pulled up in my driveway this morning and had my plants! Which, considering the proximity of Lee Co to Lake Co, this shouldn't have been too surprising, but it was all the same.

When I opened the box and extracted the two plants from shredded paper padding (which has now been added to the compost heap), I found two very nice specimens nicely bagged with some good, organic soil (as in full of organic material). I've purchased plants from nurseries that didn't look as full and healthy as these two plants did. And while I haven't fully checked yet, something about the way the Wax Myrtle's stems come up from the soil suggest to me that it may actually be two plants. Being 1 gal plants, they are not big, not that I was expecting them to be, but they do look very, very healthy.

If I can restrain myself enough, I just might starting making a purchase a month from them until I get all the 'hard to find' plants I've been searching for at my local nurseries. They don't have all of the plants I'm looking for, but they do have most of them. And even have some interesting looking native azeleas that I had not even considered before, but now I am. If I ever get the shade to grow them in.

Left is the Sparkleberry and right is the Wax Myrtle. The Sparkleberry's leaves don't show up super well against the grass background (maybe I'll take another picture of that tomorrow after I finish mulching this area) and it probably doesn't help that I already trimmed off 4 stems when planting it. So it actually looks less full now than it did when I took it out of the box. The Wax Myrtle has been pretty much untouched aside from putting it in the pot. Since the spot I have picked for it is a very, VERY sunny spot, I'm going to wait until there's a good bit of rain in the forecast to drop it in the ground.

Here is a link that might be useful: Here is where you can find them