wow - two pretty strong statements about Proven Winners, and no responses? Everyone too busy with spring out there to reply?

I have some thoughts. It was inevitable that PW products made it into the mass merchant. PW sells to growers - they do not control who the final customer is. It is, though, disappointing to see this happen.

The company I work for sells Carex Toffee Twist, among other annual grasses, and they sell well for us, but we are up north in Minnesota - perhaps it is too hot in zone 8 for it? I don't think PW is a marketing ploy - they consistently have excellent new varieties, and spend a lot of time looking for them and testing them before they hit the market. Not all of them are perfect, but they certainly are generous with sending samples of new varieties out to their customers so that plants can be tested in different areas of the country. They have some serious consumer recognition out there, and should be admired for that. just my two cents. PP

Thus the "Proven", I suppose.

I read the original post and the reply, and chose not to comment at the time. I felt the tone of the messages offensive. The negativity really bothered me.

Maybe the first two posters could have researched PW a little before trashing them. And one of you is a retailer?

viola

Viola, there is a certain amount of truth to the two posts, despite the less than complimentary way they were expressed.

Proven Winners IS a marketing approach - they don't offer anything unique that I can't access from other vendors and for a smaller price tag. They have no patents on any of the plants they sell. Carex 'Toffee Twist' is a very common cultivar and is widely available. This is a very similar situation to the "Stepables" groundcovers - commonly available plants sold under that marketing name for almost twice what I'd pay without it. Ditto the Etera plants on the market a few years ago, however they failed dismally.

And WalMart or any of the other mass merchandisers have a very well earned reputation for inferior plants. It is not so much the plants themselves, but the lack of care they receive once on the property. These are not garden centers or nurseries - they don't hire knowledgeable staff and they don't know the product nor how to care for it. And given the amount of other stuff they do sell, plants are a loss leader. I certainly wouldn't expect them to give Proven Winners product any better attention than anything else and yes, it will be dried up, diseased or dead in no time.

It is not so much "bitterness" as a case of paying for what you get. Personally I'd rather patronize and support an independent nursery and purchase a plant of quality than to save a few bucks and get something very common and half alive at a mass merchandizer.

OTOH, I do have issues with WalMart. Aside from the fact that the stores, merchandize and sales staff strike me as cheap and cheezy (yes, I'm a snob and I admit it), corporations such as this are undermining small businesses across the country. I tend not to frequent the monster home improvement stores like Home Depot or Lowe's either. And WalMart has all kinds of employment and labor issues that have not been resolved that I disagree with. But my teenage stepdaughter who is just beginning her personal shopping career loves it. And since she tries to maximize the buying power of her modest allowance, we do shop there on occasion, although I am trying to convince her that quality is better than quantity but that is a pretty unsubstantial concept when you are 14. The only thing I have ever bought there was an emergency pair of reading glasses when I left mine at home one day.

I don't know why, but in my region you can accually find decent plants at certain big box retailers yet not at others. And the local garden centers don't always have the best staff either nor are their plants always different than what you find at the local grocery store - but that could be because there are a ton of nurery/grower operations in this county and they service everybody.

I remember living in rural Oklahoma when the nearby town was getting a Super Walmart and the fuss it caused. I liked the idea of a storybook downtown shopping district but the reality was that most of those shops closed at 5 and I didn't get off work til 6, they either didn't take credit cards or my out-of-town checks. Walmart sure made getting supplies a lot easier and it forced the old shops into rethinking how they conduct business. Last time I was home to visit both business areas were doing fine.

I hope no one in the green industry is going to jump on the illegal alien case regarding Walmart. The idea that Walmart exploits illegal aliens while the green industry helps them out with jobs is definitely the pot calling the kettle unclean. As I recall, it was a subcontractor cleaning the stores that had the illegals or "undocumented workers" and not Walmart itself.

I don't want to sound like I owe them something. I did live in a very rural community in the past that could not support specialty stores that provided the diversity of goods that most of us take for granted. Walmart was a god send to those folks. As far as nursery stock went, you could get it at Walmart, the big hardware chain, or the guy who I worked for who bought in bare root stock, had the same quality of worker as Walmart in the nursery pot them up, and then sold them for half again what Walmart was charging for nice container grown stock.

Was Walmart exploiting profits while my employer was doing the right thing? Or was walmart providing an alternative to the small guy who was exploiting a community that had no alternative than to buy his newly potted bareroot well marked up plants?

The answer was that people could make that choice. They both survive to this day. Having the choice is the beauty of it. If you don't want to, you don't have to shop there, but should you keep your neighbor from that choice? I don't think so.

Our Walmarts offer good plants at good prices. Most of the the plants fly off the shelves. Let the consumer decide if their needs are met or not. One thing Walmart does have that many (certainly not all) retailers don't have is respect for the consumer...they sell what the consumer wants and for the lifestyle of the consumers. Most Americans aren't 'cheap' or 'ignorant' and most Americans shop at Walmart. Much of the complaining against Walmart is by retailers who don't add value to the consumer for the extra price...instead they add value in some form that the consumer isn't really demanding. A pink petunia is a pink petunia no matter what spin is put on it. Small retailers can't go head to head with Walmart so some niche has to be carved out. The solution is certainly not 'boo-hooing' about the box stores...they aren't going away so the 'boo-hooing' is a sure negative approach that accomplishes nothing. So 'Walmart is evil incarnate'. So what? Now what are you going to do different with your retail operation to meet that challenge? Meaningful change or more boo-hooing?

It is simply a business that identified a marketing niche and is managing toward it. That niche uses the perspective that it is a noble cause to provide as wide a variety of product to consumers at the lowest price possible.

To every action is an equal and opposite reaction. If you don't want the consequences of that efficiency, such as lower quality, competition in your market place, or getting your prices beaten down in order to be land a massive volume contract with them.

It is the free market.

As a retail provider you can identify the vacuum that is created by these stores and exploit that. Or, you can go head to head and have your clock cleaned.

As a supplier, you can land huge volume sales at very small margins by agreeing to their terms. Or, you can provide to the other resalers who lost their suppliers to those big box stores (in order to meet their contracts, there is little left).

You can identify a lack of quality if there is one, and market to those that prefer it.

As a consumer, you can make any choice you want.

It is no different in anything. Is a contractor who does free design any different to a landscape designer than a box store? Are they criminal or morally wrong for gaining opportunity for sales through this practice while at the same time devaluing the design industry as a whole? I say no.

Does Joe backyard gardener turned designer result in lower prices to compete with for those of us who make a living in design? You bet. I say have at it. It is free market. I have to find a way to get my piece of the pie and I do with no resentment.

Would my income go up considerably if landscape design was mandated to be done by landscape architects? You bet. If you ever read any threads that I have contributed to regarding licensing of designers or requiring LA's, you know that no one is more against that than I am.

Work with the cards handed to you. Walmart, Home Depot, and others are a reality. Use them and the situations they create to how it best serves you. That will be different for each of us.

Two excellent previous postings. If the big guys are droppng the ball on quality or service then it's an opportunity for other gardening entrepreneurs to take advantage of. it's good old Supply and Demand. Free enterprise. The customers will vote with their feet. There's an irony that some garden professionals claim to know what customers want more than the customers themselves.

"Work with the cards handed to you. Walmart, Home Depot, and others are a reality" That's called being mature and going forward and not pouting in the corner.

My previous post was negative, yes. I know about the Proven Winners program, and I don't care for it. The main reason is that it does not appear to be region specific, and in my area, anything that does well in the north will poop out in the heat of summer. The label misleads our local consumers. My 'marketing ploy' phrase was harsh - I don't really see it as a ploy in any devious sense, just a marketing program that is misssing the mark.

annabellethomp:

are you in the bedding plant business? Have you ever had a chance to work with any of the Proven Winner partners? They have three main partners who provide plugs to growers, and I have always found all of them to be extremely helpful when it comes to selecting plant material for your specific zone. They are at all the major trade shows, and you can take advantage of all the plant experts that are manning the booths - EuroAmerican Propagators in California has quite a line of product, including Proven Winners, Proven Selections and other cool plants - and they are I think in zone 8 (not sure- I was just there for pack trials, and I think that San Diego area is zone 8). They have regional sales managers there who could easily help you come up with a list of proper material for wherever you are in the southern US.

Now, that doesn't mean other growers in your area are doing the same thing, and I have no doubt that certain varieties are hitting the shelves in zone 8 that have no business being there. That is too bad for everybody involved because it makes the PW folks look bad.

I find it to be a marketing program that does hit the mark with consumers. Where I work we always have quite a few PW items, and they sell incredibly well. They had more new plants for 2006 at the California pack trials than anyone else - really exciting fun plants, but then again, I'm just a plant geek and can't get enough.

If you need a name of someone specific in the PW organization, I'd be happy to provide you with someone who can help. (no, I don't work for PW)

PP

San Diego is in USDA 11.

According to the catalogs I receive from Proven Winner,most of the plants listed are trade marked,registered or have a plant patent number.
I have a question regarding trade marks.We have a daylily nursery and note we have some very old daylilies with names the same as other plants that they have trade marked.
An example is North Star Buxus sempervirens.There is a daylily named North Star [Hall 1948]
Does this trade mark prohibit us from selling the daylily or any other plant using that name Can we name a new daylily cultivar by that name or does this pertain only to Boxwood.

I absolutely regard Wal-Mart and others like Home Depot and Lowes, CRAP CRAP CRAP WHEN IT COMES TO HORTICULUTRE!!! The care, the selection, the attempt of a CERTIFIED NURSERYMAN...I just laugh at the poor souls that shop at these stores actually looking for a great plant......still laughing....

I understand everyone's pros and cons to this discussion. But I'm curious. If the box stores came to you and asked you to grow for them would you do it? I know I would.
But I'd still stop in and make sure every thing is taken care of too.

I wouldn't seel to a box store, for two reasons. One, the staff would not be educated enough to sell and care for the plants. Two, its a box store. Box stores, with behind them lawyers, investors, and coal business ethics, tend to close shops up and take away city and township commerce........Its the colonization of America by big business....

And look "The man" is looking over your shoulder and at your bank account and so on and so on....I'm not a conspiracy theory kind a guy. As said before the box stores are here to stay. I do shop at both mom and pop and the box store (and I prefer independents). The boxes are not putting the local nurseries out of business around here.

Small shops close because they can't compete. Usually this means they can't change (although that's not always the case) The box stores will knock out the little guy but it's the little guy that has to change, period. I would love to have a nursery next door to a box store.. Location, Location, Location.

What's ironic is that I'm quite certain that the box stores do read threads like this and learn from them. As people complain they will change and they will over come their short comings. They WILL change and we will too.

More of a good theory not to spend money at the "BIG" stores........

This discussion could just as easily be about whether you should hire a designer who works out of his house, does maintenance, plantings, and holds a part time job or a full time professional that works out of an office with other professionals.

The reality is that as a consumer you have a choice on what designer makes sense to them in terms of quality and price. Each of these situations is successful, so there are consumers for both. Designers looking for work can offer there services as an employee to a big firm or not much like a nursery can choose to sell to wal-mart or not. Whether the design firm wants to hire a particular designer is up to that firm just like whether or not they want to buy from a particular nursery.

If we want to criticize Wal-mart, we might want to ask ourselves if we are Wal-Mart or Talbot's?

Don't shop at Wal-mart or the others, so I can't be criticized.....clean soul here...lol

I find that hard to believe you've never shopped in a box store. Call me skeptical.

Mylu, you are skeptical.....Don't believe in Wal-Mart, Home Depot or Lowes. I can find everything I need with local, small business and knowing I shop there, keeps local commerce going instead of closing up shop. Believe me, there are many people that act and beleive the same thing as to preserve small business but not adding into the wallet of the box stores...

Mal-Wart clearly has a rather poorly concealed antisocial agenda ('We are the Borg...'). This year it was announced that they are miffed that certain drugstore chains have been able to resist their predations, and they will be trying to address this problem this year. They've also noticed that the average Borg-Mart shopper could be banking there as well...Watching an M-Wart spokesperson field questions from a local TV newsman recently gave me the creeps. Home Despot sees everyone in town walk through its doors, sooner or later, because it is almost the only place that has certain items anymore. Somebody else - probably a selection of competing operators - was offering these goods before the Despot arrived.

Growers engaging in contracts with such outfits aren't going to be handled with kid gloves. Independents trying to operate in the same markets are going to be targeted for elimination. 'Corporate Organism', indeed.

The damage is done. Their evil scheme has worked. Americans now expect everything at wholesale prices and quality doesn't mean as much to many consumers. The effect that big box retailing has had on consumer spending habits is profound.

Local independent baker told me that when he shows his wares to buyers at supermarkets he is feeling out as possible wholesale customers they don't even look at the product, just ask him what he wants for it and then look in the computer to see what they are already paying.

"Growers engaging in contracts with such outfits aren't going to be handled with kid gloves"

Not here. Wally world is very good to suppliers. The rules are set out and if you come through with a quality product you can depend on future wholesale sales. This allows better planning and thus less expensive input costs. Go see the store manager and ask one of their buyes to contact you. They'll buy local if you have a good hort product.

To deliver a lot of goods at a low cost takes a lot of strict management. That is not easy to do. That is why not everyone can compete with Wal-Mart, not everyone wants to work for Wal-Mart, not everyone wants to produce for Wal-Mart, and not everyone wants to buy from them.

It is a balance between loss and reward. As a producer your reward is a huge volume of sales and your loss is a smaller profit margin and a lot of tough management decisions. As a consumer the reward is low prices and the loss is in quality. As a community the reward is that all those people in low income housing can also afford clothes and all those other materials most of us take for granted and have a legitimate shot at an unskilled decent paying job with benefits, the cost is that the guy selling you the same thing for twice as much will have to sell you higher niche items or die. If your community is rural, you don't have to travel all over the nearest city from shop to shop.

As a consumer you can go down town and pay a little more for quality goods, or save a few bucks at Wal-Mart.

As a small business person you are going to be out competed on low end things. Just because you could upsell low end things and make a profit does not make it wrong that someone can out compete you.

Do you try to hire the most cost effective help?
Do you select the cheapest priced gas?
Do you shop for the best prices for plants and negotiate better deals from those that you buy a greater volume? Are you able to keep prices down and get more work because of that.

Would you hire a landscaper who has higher paid help that works slower, that marks up from retail prices on plants he bought at the nearest high end retail nursery, that has every expensive gadget to pay for because he is not running lean and mean, ... and pay him more? Some of you will because you find what he does and what he sells to be worth it to you. But, some of you are going to hire a person down the street in a beat up old truck with a bunch of rusty tools that will barely mark up the wholesale plants thats/he will spend three days running back and forth for just so s/he can make a tiny profit in the three weks it takes to get your little job done cheaply. Most are going to find someone in between. There is nothing wrong with any of it including Wal-Mart as long as someone is willing to provide it and someone is willing to buy it. Get over it!

My understanding is that Wal-Mart is a company store, that is they pay low so their employees will feel oblidged to shop where they work. This isn't the only antisocial, regressive facet of their operation, by any means. Get over it? Wake up!

"My understanding is that Wal-Mart is a company store" That understanding is based on first hand experience or something you read or heard?

No one has to work there. People choose to work there. My wife used to work there and got paid well and had a very good benefit package including medical and dental. How do you come up with the company store garbage. No one told her that she had to shop there, but when she did, she got a 10% discount.

I don't ever hear anyone with first hand experience complain about being oppressed by Wal-Mart. There is some kind of resentment to Wal-Marts success that makes people afix buzz words like "company store" to it.

No one has to work there.
No one has to supply them.
No one has to shop there.

But, for some reason, an aweful lot of people make that choice. Why do so many of you want to deny people making that choice?

Do you provide discounts to your help? If so are you trapping them into buying from you?

Do you let your workers buy from you on credit and take it out of their pay? That is much closer to what the old share cropper's "company store" was all about. Wal-Mart does not do that.

I work in a town that fought Wal-Mart coming in. Ny coworkers said all of the same things some of you are saying. Down town would close, yada, yada, yada,... Now all of these people shop there and the most vocal anti Wal-Mart person in the office now has a husband who works there (at night and they don't let anyone know). Rumor and inuendo is apparently not the same as reality.

Is your knowledge of this oppression first hand or are you being used by others who have an agenda?

FWIW, the issues regarding WalMart and its problems with employment practices and labor relations are pretty well documented by anyone who takes the time to research it (or who regularly reads the newspapers). The company, the nation's largest employer, is the subject of dozens of lawsuits, including violations of child labors laws, class action sex discrimination suits and unfair labor practices (unpaid overtime).

It pays a meager wage - the average WalMart employee earns $7.5 an hour, right at the poverty level for a family of 3. Women employees, who make up 68% of the WalMart workforce, earn 6.2% less than men in similar positions. Female store managers - just 15% of the total managerial staff - earn on average $16,400 a year less than their male counterparts.

Benefits are lousy and expensive - approximately 62% of the employees are not covered by insurance benenfits simply because they cannot afford them. WalMart requires they pay 42% of their coverage costs versus 16% that is the national average for employer sponsored insurance coverage. And the coverage does not include many routine medical procedures or child vaccinations, although the company touts its program to pay for expensive medical procedures like organ transplants. Wonder how often they need to step up to the plate on that one compared to paying for your kid's routine vaccines or well-child check ups? Deductibles are outrageously high - $1000 is common - so that the average employee doles out approximately $3950 in insurance costs and doctor bills before WalMart starts picking up the tab.

Because of paltry wages and nonexistant or excessively expensive insurance benefits, many of WalMart's employees, specially in the deep south where the store has an enormous presence and other, better paying jobs difficult to find, are on public assistance. In WM's home state of Arkansas, 9% of its employees receive public assistance - in Tennessee, it's a whopping 26%.

The store is blatantly anti-union and any attempt at organization at the employee level is typically met with immediate termination.

Because of its size and the bucks behind it, WalMart has huge politcal clout, specially with the current administration. They receive millions in government subsidies in the form of infrastructure improvements, tax credits, financing, etc. in their march to gobble up middle America. And I won't even address the very real situations where the opening of a mega-WalMart or one of its distributions centers has negatively impacted other, smaller businesses - they are too many to list.

This company is never going to make it on a poll of "best places to work" and its impact on the economy of this country is enormous. Anyone who believes otherwise simply has their head in the sand.

Laag:

good post.

I also have no idea how Walmart makes its employees shop there. The statemnet just shows some of the ridiculous exaggeration thrown out by folks who parrot babble.

Sure Walmart is subject to lawsuits. This is America. Walmart has over 100 thousand employees and tens of billions in sales. The owner of of our town's largest garden center is a friend and he's been sued a half dozen times by suppliers, customers and employees. It's become a standing jolk between us that he's going to get all the plaintiffs together and turn over the keys to them gratis and let them run things..then they can sue eachother.

Wal-Mart is a retail store chain. These jobs do not have a history of high pay and good benefits in any of those companies and certainly are not taking skilled people and keeping them down. These are jobs for the people that don't get hired by you and don't get hired by many others either.

We need to take note that all the other department stores that have not played hardball in their buying and other cost cutting measures have disappered or have filed for bancrupcy several times (Sears, K-Mart, JC Penny, King's, Giant, Woolworth's,....). Wal-Mart found a way to survive and so may Sears and K-Mart if they pay attention. Who remembers the big benefit packages these companies put out in the 60's? I never did.

Where are your alternative stores? (I know, Wal-Mart killed them all) Where are you going to buy your junk if you kill Wal-Mart? Talbot's for underwear. Orvis for a few fishing hooks? The Toyota dealer for an oil filter?

Who here gives their employees a better benefit package than Wal-Mart? Who here has as good a benefit package as Wal-Mart employees?

Here is a link to an article in the Village Voice about a current government official's role on the board of directors in Wal-Mart.

Here is a link that might be useful: Surprise!

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

OF course their employees shop there! They can't afford to shop anywhere else! They get paid crap wages, and so they have wages to buy themselves crap. Simple math folks!

What would happen if those of you who defend Walmart so vociferously and forcefully put your energy into a different kind of cause? Something a little more noble and uplifting than championing a large corporation.
Walmart pays millions of dollars every year for public relations. Why do their work for free?
The world needs your considerable energy. Walmart doesn't.

I've been pretty broke in my day and Wal-Mart made it a lot more easy to live that the "local down town merchants".

Do you want the people working at Walmart working for you?

For those that think that Wal Mart is a good thing, do an unbiased search question at your favorite search engine. I typed in the question,"How much is the Walton family fortune?", at Ask Jeeves. Try to find something positive.

"A study (from the office of CA Congressman George Miller) shows that for any new Wal*Mart store with 200 employees, the taxpayers pick up a tab of $420,750 a year in public assistance costs. For, you see, the workers still need social help and must depend on emergency medical services"...

( http://www.swans.com/library/art10desk001.html )

Terran

I always wonder why our local cooperative grocery store with 150 plus employeees (the majority full-time) can offer 100% paid health including dental and eye care. On top of that a matching 401k and average starting wages better than Wal-Mart. It still makes a profit. Does anyone really believe that Wal-Mart can't do better? Do they really need to charge an $18,000 yr. employee $2000 for health insurance? Of course most of them can't pay it and instead the government pays for their health care costs. That is why Wal-Mart does it. Let someone else bear the cost. This is a de facto subsidy of Wal-Mart amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Almost half a million dollars for a store with just 200 employees. It is a national disgrace for America's largest employer to depend on state and federal government subsidies of a large percentage of its employees (food stamps, medicaid, and various state sponsored low income health care plans). Imagine how many more needy people could be helped by these programs if Wal-Mart employees weren't lined up at the government trough. How can these Wal-Mart executives sleep at night?

My husband works at Lowes and has been taken care of very nicely, very good salary, health benefits, stocks, employee discounts, extra discounts at Christmas, etc.

The plant department is great for beginning gardeners, if they lose a plant they haven't lost much money. If you are looking for "generic" plants the box stores are the cheapest.

When they are ready for the specialty plants they can come see me!!

Next they can start taking care of their customers very nicely.

They have suppliers:
Whether they beat them down or not, people are willing to sell to them.

They have employees: Somehow, dispite all that I have heard and read, they have people who want to work for them - even here where no one seems to be able to get enough help.

They have customers: Despite the protests, bad press, inferior products, poor customer service, and everything else that is spoken and written, the place is a mad house of customers.

When you cut through everything else, no one would supply them if they did not want to, no one would work there if they did not want to, and no one would shop there if they did not want to. Many of you don't want to do any of these and that is your choice.

Do any of you look to buy your materials at the best price you can?

Do any of you try to keep your employee costs low?
Do any of you sharpen your pencils to be able to under bid competitors to make sales?

Who among us can say all of our workers are unionized, all are well documented with the INS, and we pay for their health insurance.

I think a lot of this is resentment because they out compete us in these three ways. They buy cheaper, they get help when we can't, and they sell for less than we can. In other words, they beat us. At least they beat those of us who believe that we are competing with them. Break that mind set, and they are something off to the side that does not matter one way or the other.

When I want an off the shelf product which does not have to be high quality, I don't want to have to buy it at a specialty store or from a store that where I have to pay for their not so well managed overhead.

I especially do not want the less fortunate in my community to have to buy their clothes at Talbot's. I also know that some toothless hag is not going to get a job as a floor sales person at Talbot's, but I have seen some running registers at the Walmarts of the world.

... yet everyone wants to advocate for affordable housing. If you want that, they need jobs available to them that won't go to someone else and they need affordable food, clothing, and products.

"toothless hag"? lol Yes, there is employment for all of us!

I got that from a Rolling Stones Song. I believe their version was "a toothless spitting hag", but who needs to be gross.

Her male counterpart is "Aqualung" (Jethro Tull).

Americans are digging their own economic grave by patronizing and working for WalMart. The former are lured by either by lust for cheap goods, or the need for them due to low income; the latter by desperation for employment. It's true that they have a "choice" to work/shop there or not, at least that was the case when the chain was young and there were other choices. As the behemoth keeps gobbling up the landscape and deposing the mom-and-pops, before long it will be the only game in town, and then those cheap prices will be replaced by monopolistic prices.

As for vendors, Proven Winners may eventually regret its partnership with WalMart if it puts too many of its eggs in the WalMart basket. It's already happened at the other big box stores that individual nursery growers have found themselves dancing to Home Depot's or Lowe's tune when they committed too much of their growing space to those accounts at the expense of their smaller-but-steady customers, only to have the store chains decide to drop them.

A recent report stated that the taxpayers of the state of CT spend $5 million per year on health and other benefits for employees of Walmart. A while back, they were found to have violated child labor laws at a couple of CT stores. Their lawyers somehow cut a scandalous deal with the agency they were dealing with (Labor Dept?) that gives them 15 days' notice for any future inspections. State officials are now trying to void the deal.

Reports have circulated that WM gives new employees information on where and how to apply for welfare benefits when they are hired.

U.S. manufacturers of the goods they sell cannot compete with the overseas manufacturing companies who don't have to conform to environmental regulations or labor laws, and WM is reported to have an arrangement with the government of China that makes it even easier to do business there. Even worse, WM passes along only a very small portion of the resulting cost savings to consumers, and pockets the rest. So on a $8 item, you save $1, WM makes an extra $5, and the American worker who might have made the item is out of work.

A documentary that aired on TV last year related the story of a manufacturer of televisions somewhere in the midwest, I think, who used to supply WM. The factory closed when the company could not meet the price WM demanded and the business went to a Chinese company, eliminating a large portion of their business. Ironically, the workers who were displaced when the TV manufacturer went under were later able to find jobs at, you guessed it, the new WM that opened in their town. At half the wages.

There is a new documentary making the rounds of various colleges and other institutions who are holding public showings, called The High Cost of Low Prices. Anyone can make a reservation to view it. A web search will turn up info.

I no longer shop at WM for the reasons stated above. I also check the products I'm considering buying for where they were manufactured. Paying an extra $2-3 for a product made here in the U.S. over one made in China, will not break the bank. Chinese workers need a living wage and some of the protections to their health and welfare that we are accustomed to here in the U.S. If there is a cause that needs some energy, human rights is a good one.

I try not to directly oppose Walmart, myself. If they have bonnie best tomatoes, I try to have something else. I try to have things that they don't have. But if there is something that I don't sell myself, and my buddy down the road doesn't sell it, like potting soil, then I send them to Walmart. Since I have such a small business, I can't grow everything. So I let them sell the cheap, common things!

"A documentary that aired on TV last year related the story of a manufacturer of televisions somewhere in the midwest, I think, who used to supply WM. The factory closed when the company could not meet the price WM demanded and the business went to a Chinese company"

hmmmmmmm. I worked at one of the plants that supplied the glass to this manufacturer. The plant is now closed and I as well as 1,500 other employees lost our jobs. Do I blame WM? No. I'm sure as long as Chinese goods remain so cheap even after their trans-oceanic journey someone will step up to the plate to import and sell them, be it Walmart or the locally owned hardware store.
I looked over the Proven Winners at WM this spring, but ended up buying them at a local nursery instead... the quality was much better plus I got to oggle all the fancy plants that I can no longer afford.
Sandy- I did buy the potting soil at WM.

PS: My first company moved to Puerto Rico, the next left for Mexico. Now that this one has gone to China I'm leaving manufacturing behind and trading in the engineering degree for teaching certification.

You all sound like professionals...so here's a POV from a simple gardener. I love plants so I love going to those nurseries around town that cater to people who love plants...and they provide really cool seminars, great herb plant help for those of us who WANT more than the few types of main herbs sold at "box stores" (including someone getting me a plug of her own sweetgrass plant when they couldn't find one for me) ....they offer thousands and thousanmds of different plants at my favorite nursery. I just would never NOT support such a place!! and they do WELL here ...I know the owenrs and they are youngish, but they are both very open minded to working with the niche they have. They explore it very aggressively (but nicely) . And they do well.

This is a free market and there are absolotely millions of people who DO know a thing of two about their plants and will go out of our way to support the places that are there for us.

That said, I go to Home Depot too...do I buy plants there? Not so much, no....but I do like to go there and get this great organic compost they've got that I've seen nowhere else. And I have , on the rare occasion, bought a plant from there - they have done just fine, but only because I will only buy a plant that I can see is ok and not too stressed. I know what I'm looking for. I buy far, far more of my plants at the local nurseries and I am not the only one doing that for sure !

The upshot here , I think, is that this is a free market and the smaller establishments CAN cater to their target audience very nicely. I have worked part time at one nursery, another good one, and I have been at many in the area. Do I see them all catering well to their niche? No I don't . But I certainly see some that do incredibly well.

And I thnk that is how things tend to fall out...it's just business, it's not about the masses who don't know plants or lost integrity of plant providers or morals or anything like that . In the end perhaps it's really just mostly how well you can flow with your own business. Selling plants is a business. You might love your plants and care for them better than the box stores (and this is definitely true from what I've noted ) however, the plant is a "unit" , no matter how great a unit...and selling units is the object of making money. Business is business.

I think all you professionals who sell plants or design for a living are so incredibly blessed!! You are in the business of selling "units" that bring incredible joy , beauty - not mention "units' that can teach patience, love and caretaking ability - to everyone who buys form you or buys your designs. I think that rocks as a profession!

Wishing you all a wonderful business year in 2006!
Chris