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Summerstone Nursery

hth.

Sue

3 years ago I had recently lost my job to illness and was in remission, money was tight of course but I desperately needed to do something to take my mind off of all the stress & though its hard work I loved to garden & saw it as nurturing, constructive & therapeutic.
For years I had wanted and tried without success to grow a flowering dogwood tree. Its what I wanted more than anything... they cost $80.00 and up at most garden centers so when I did a search on Google and found one for only 8.95 from Summerstone Nursery I was very both leery & excited but when I saw I could garden my whole yard if I spent $60 I could get 3 free plants.... I was ecstatic... now having lost my job and being ill, $60 was stretching my budget but I could not resist the idea of building a garden along with my dog wood tree so I pushed my limits and ordered 18 plants, I ordered my tree lots of flowering / showy bushes and perennials that were meant to thrive on my nurturing and make my yard beautiful forever...
Never having delt with internet nurseries before I was admittedly quite disappointed when a bunch of sticks with roots (no protection at all...showed up, a number of them had lost the paper tag and I was forced to try to guess what was what.... I even took things to other garden centers trying to find out what was what,....but before I did anything I called the company & did exactly as instructed, I placed them in water immediately for 48 hours..... then I planted each plant that was tagged in the predetermined spot and potted the plants I was not sure of in hopes that they would bloom & let me know what was what....
Bottom line....and sad ending was.... Out of 18 "dormant" plants sent only 5 survived... and the rest of the sticks were mostly dead not dormant....or too week to thrive.
Out of the 5 that survived.... Only 3 were actually what I ordered & my pink dogwood tree I wanted sooooo bad turned out to be what I believe is a dogwood shrub out of place in the center of my yard hiding the best part of my garden....and I do not find it and its little cluster of "white" flowers to be pleasing in anyway and the pink crapmertle I planted in the "perfect" spot in my back yard is... an unknown shrub that gets berries and some tiny white flowers... and I have no idea if its toxic to my dogs or grandchildren.... So out of 18 plants and for $60 I got 2 Althea's that were $ 3.75 each ($ 7.50) & a Pink Spirea $ 3.75 total cost of correct living plants is $11.25.... The first complaint to the company got me a few more dead plants delivered (& I had to wait a year!!!) the excuse was they did not think fall would be advisable for my zone... ) so by then it was a year from my first order... and even though the woman seemed concerned and willing to help... I waited and waited and nothing arrived.... after that I was unable to get any help told to call other numbers....ignored, put on hold and never returned... told it was too late or they had no record of a complaint just given the run around to an extreme...and I did not need the stress...I was sick again in and out of hospital and could no longer garden anyway.

It was clear they relied on another company to do the shipping.... They just take your order and money and then leave it up to an off site place to handle things...
My therapy garden turned into a truly sad place...and I'm too sick to dig up the ugly depressing shrubs that were suppose to be my beautiful tree's (I planned to turn the pink crapmertle into a tree....

But as I looked at the ugly shrub where my dogwood was suppose to be I throught about the complaint I made to the BBB and decided to check them out again...

I was happy to see we are now asked to call :

The Tennessee Division of Consumer Affairs at http://tn.gov/consumer/ or 615.741.4737.

And I did I hope you all do too!

Here is a link that might be useful: BBB/ concermer affairs

I should have read comments first too. but then I would have never met them.

First of all, I am an advocate for buying local. This does not mean your local Wallyworld. I could not pay the local nursery mark up. So finding a mail nursery 3 hours away was nice. Summerstone seemed like a really good bargain. I ordered $180 dollars’ worth of trees and plants. Probale not a gamble I should of took. I have ordered from starkies and Gurnies so I knew what to expect, sticks to water. Two weeks after I ordered they were sent. 8 days later they come in. The 3 hour tour took 8 days to arrive. That is 8 days of cooking at the post office. When they arrived, they were pretty cooked. I planted and hoped for the best. After 3 weeks about 10 percent of the grew. I read the internet review. What the hell did I do? So I decided a field trip was in order. I gathered up my dead sticks. Note: Strawberries dissolved into the ground. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Note: take more time, Lynchburg Jack Daniels is in the area.

I got that and found the internet reports were right. I was greeted the meanest by a sales person. She would not let me in. She said I had too many trees. She said I just needed to plant them.

Note: she was like 5 years old. And the best sales person there. Her grandpa the owner was taking her to the rodeo.

This is truly a family owned company The three order takers and a secretary. I told them the issue and they replaced the items with beautiful new sticks. They were friendly and highly knowledgeable. I inquired of them some of the internet responses and the frustration of shipping. It sound like it comes from an incompetent post office. I think issues are happening because of this. It looks like it is also a ratio. Only the angry complain. I am very happy with what I received. They are very friendly and helpful. They are not a big bureaucracy and don’t have a lot of technical devices and and gadgets to make them pretty. But if you want a company that cares, Summerstone is there. Their one thing they could do to improve is straighten out the shipping issue. Post office needs to quit proving the government does not work.