Why pick on Wells-Medina? They're all paying for the cost of fuel used to truck nursery goods. If you want to see who, if anyone has a higher markup go around behind a truck making deliveries of the same items from the same grower to multiple local outlets, find out how much each is pricing these for resale.

Otherwise, no consistent basis for comparison.

FWIW, being a frequent local nursery visitor over many years (as well as being employed by several), I have not found Wells-Medina to be significantly overpriced compared to others. In fact, I've found some rather good deals there over the years.

Nursery goods HAVE increased in price over the last few years.......just the cost of doing business in this economy (have you noticed your grocery bill recently??). Labor and other overhead, licensing costs on patented plants, consolidation of the wholesale marketplace and of course, rising fuel costs all are contributors.

Believe it or not, all the local big players keep an eye on the pricing of their primary competitors and price their stock competitively....excluding the discounters and box stores of course. There will be some individual differences, but overall, they run roughly the same.

And afterall, Sky's got to pay for those big new greenhouses and lot revamping!!

Speaking of grocery stores, that is another area where different people have different ones that they gripe about being categorically expensive. I get the impression this is based primarily on random items that the complainer thinks are priced too high. With all the different items and all the different sales large food stores have at any one time, often the same item will be cheaper at one place than another. But another item at the first place may be cheaper than the second.

Getting back to nursery goods, even big box stores aren't always so cheap. Or they may be offering a different grade. Or using lack of quality control to maintain a lower selling price. Unless you get them right off the truck, they often may have been allowed to wilt or sit in shrink wrap on a sunny day, before being stocked. So you pay less, and get less - perhaps with the reduction in quality greater than the price difference.

Why pick on Wells-Medina?

I am not picking on Wells-Medina, I love that place. I just remembered Sky being priced a little lower, and now not so much.

Basis for comparison? If you aren't comparing the same items, from the same suppliers, who presumably charged them both the same price...

This must have been an awful year for nurseries with the cold spring. I'm usually trolling them all for weeks, but this year with the lack of sunshine and the cold weather, it's not been the usual fun experience. And it's probably been even more expensive for them to heat the greenhouses.

The ones I frequent have been busy lately. The big Seattle arboretum sale seemed to be pretty active also, with a lot of stock disappearing from the tables.

Being "busy lately" doesn't make up for the sales lost in February, March and April because the weather was too cold and wet even to contemplate visiting a garden center, let alone planting anything! And despite how good sales may be as the weather improves and warms up (and yes, we've been slammed the last few weeks) those lost sales are just that.....lost. Combine two long, cold, wet and lackluster springs in a row with an overall declining trend in plant sales and it's no wonder many nurseries/garden centers are in trouble and prices are up.

So? I said things seemed to be better at the moment, as opposed to more of same.

By the way, the Arboretum sale was in April.

bboy, your rudeness is exceeded only by your arrogance. Get over yourself!

There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.