Made one of my "Spring sweeps" of regional garden centers in the east suburbs. All of the following are pretty decent outfits, but there are some subtle differences. Started at Penn Hills Lawn & Garden Center, which is tidy and has a decent selection with good prices. There, I picked up an upshooting campanula "blue clips" and a popular "home run" rose bush. From there, I moved on to Beall's Nursery in Plum for my first visit ever - decent selection, prices not that great! To me, just seems like one of those boutique outfits for people with 300K homes looking to drop 5K on instant landscaping. Then I wrapped down 286 to Stanford Home Center, one of the larger "Do It Best" chain locations. They always seem to have some oddball plant types and have been known to goof on a few occasions. Hence, didn't take me long to find a 5gal Pink N Pretty hydrangea retail for a mere $20! Visiting across the street at Holiday Garden Center (huge selection, okay prices), they had the same PNP's half the size for $30! Lastly, I stopped up at Lowe's to pick up 2 more 1gal Forever & Ever starter hydrangeas - "peppermint" and "early sensation". They were really letting their stuff go up there, but these still had some good growth on them.

One of my pet peeves about the non-big-box garden centers is: why do they have to sell nothing but the huge 3-5 gal pots of shrubs and charge 50 bucks for it, when they could just sell me a starter size for $15 bucks? Are they afraid the small size makes them more prone to failure? I prefer to grow things from a young age, because it's more rewarding and it fits my budget! Besides, you can order mostly small sizes on the Internet, and they usually ship well bare-root in a box!

At any rate, that concludes my rant for the day - will get out and work tomorrow!