I’m a bit late to buying some plants this year. One green world for one reason or another still has every variety of honey berry and blueberry that I was looking for. They don’t get very good reviews on Dave Wilsons but they do on google reviews. I was wondering what the general consensus is on them? Do they send the actual varieties listed? Do they make a lot of mistakes?
I’ve ordered from them twice and I’ve had a great experience. All the correct varieties were sent and the plants were all healthy and are now thriving in the ground.
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I’ve been happy with what I received from them. But this time of year, I would be worried about FedEx, UPS, or USPS dropping the ball and the plants dying in transit.
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It is a reputable nursery even though on a pricey side.
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Their image of Seuri pear is different from Raintree’s. Some look like generic photos and not true to phenotype. Otherwise, good. Small product., but not $60 like RT
I like OGW and have had good experiences with them. Keep in mind though their prices are high and their plants are small.
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I have purchased plants from this nursery for 3 decades, both for personal use and in bulk from their wholesale division. The owners and managers are real horticulturists with worldwide connections to plant sources. It is a quality operation. Infrequently I’ve had a shipment of plants with one missing a tag or two of the same plants when I ordered two different plants. They’ve always quickly corrected the problem.
All the plants I’ve received arrived in excellent health. I’ve never had a problem with shipments being stuck in transit. However, shipment from Portland to San Diego is not fraught with problems.
I’ve never had an issue with plant size, in fact you can chose among sizes when they are all in stock. You can also be put on a waiting list for a specific size of a plant. I highly recommend using the waiting list for cultivars that are completely out of stock.
In my opinion their prices are very reasonable for the quality of plants they sell. The potting and shipping materials are all of high nursery quality. They are a fully licensed nursery and so you should expect all plants are on a preventative pest abatement program. You won’t get a cheap plant (using the English meaning of “cheap”).
They are not “organic” but I often worry about plant sellers using that qualification to hide the fact that they have not invested in an effective pest and disease prevention program. I’m especially concerned about “organic” sellers who only ship bareroot to CA. This means they are not treating their plants with an effective pesticide for soil pathogens and pests.
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I have bought many things from them. A few years ago I bought a pink popcorn blueberry from them. It was diseased or had a major fungal infection. According to them the variety has less resistance to disease which made sense since my pink popcorn from other sellers had issues too. This year I bought a Galicia Nigra fig from them in a pot which was a good plant, I bought 2 kinds of maypop from them which are doing good so far, 2 almonds and 1 never came out of dormancy but the other was a potted plant and already out of dormancy, I got a tri lite peach plum, necta zee necta plum and paw paws from them which were destroyed by animals for being too small, a green gage plum from them as well. My thoughts on them with all my plants I have gotten from them is some only they sell like the Mountain Rose apple so you have to go through them in some cases. Also a lot of their bare root stock supply is amazing.They show up consistently in every plant search I find because of their massive inventory. I would just do your research on the plant first and I would also check zones as well. I constantly find their zones are off. They list all seedless grapes only to zone 6 and when I asked about the varieties on this website someone responded they were way hardier than zone 6, Nikitas gift persimmon is rated as zone 5 but only withstands down to -10 in their own description and I am sure I can go on. Their customer service is great and as long as you do your research on the plants the plants are great as well. I just don’t think their website is great for finding information is all. Like I said most of my plants from there not only have survived but thrived and the ones that did not were due to plant variety being bad, small but unprotected plants or a plant that was green with a scratch test but just never came out of dormancy so there is no way to know it was not going to come out.
I agree that One Green World is pretty well priced. Not sure where the others are getting the high prices from. I have had some issues with plants but as you said they quickly corrected it. I agree with the selection and that is one of the reasons I am surprised it is not so highly priced. Places like Raintree are twice the price of One Green World. Shipping is only 20 dollars most of the time when I order from them. One Green World is one of my most shopped nursery right around Raintree because of their selection. They seem to have everything from your cold hardy plants to your warm plants. A lot of wonderful varieties too. I would shop at One Green World more if not for the fact by the time I get everything ordered more often than not everything has been ordered by then because they open their doors around October or November. I am about maxed out so planning on stopping ordering too.
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Good summary. I saw the title and my first reaction was, trust them for what?
I trust that they are acting in good faith, run a competent business, fulfill their orders and generally have good and varied stock. I also trust their labels as much as anyplace (except that for some varieties they use alternate trademark names).
I do not trust their pictures at all, something I take issue with, because they know that some of their pictures are not the variety they are attached to. Would it be so hard to label the picture as such?
@Richard they changed owners in 2015. I believe the previous owners, still own the wholesale nursery, Northwoods, that provides much of One Green World’s stock. But sounds like it is the previous owners you are describing in your post.
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@murky
Thanks for the update about the owners. Since 2015 I’ve ordered 24 retail plants from OGW and did not notice any changes other than routine improvements in their website functionality. I agree about plant pictures on sellers’ websites.
I checked my spreadsheet and I have purchased 10 (fruit trees, berry bushes, cane fruit) from them and overall quality and experience has been good… I would give them 8 or 9 out of 10.
One bad experience… I purchased a Illinois Everbearing mulberry from them… and when it fruited the mulberries were WHITE… a little sweet, no tartness at all, no real flavor. Obviously not a IE Mulberry.
I let them know about the mixup and they gave me a code for a credit on my next purchase… which was decent of them.
I bought 3 Heritage Raspberries from Bob Wells Nursery… and one of those turned out to be a black raspberry (not sure what variety). They taste very good.
I bought a Reliance peach tree from Starks 20 years ago, only to find out after I joined here… that it was not a Reliance (my blossoms were too pretty showy)… oh well…
So mix ups do happen with other Nursery’s and evidently it is pretty common.
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I’ve bought lots of stuff from them. All were healthy, labeled correctly and grew beautifully
In one case, two of the plants they sent came broken above the graft line. When I wrote to them,they immediately replaced them at no charge.
Nursery legally have to send true to name plants. That is why many will send store credit or replace it if they sent the wrong plant. I also know there are legal seed germination rates. Germination rate legality is why they have to test seed. Corn is legally supposed to have a 90% germination rate I believe for example. That being said I have had nurseries no stand behind their product if the product came dead. While I have gotten a mislabeled plant from a local nursery I have never complained about it. I think the plant in question was around 3-5 dollars so not worth the time. The real issues with mislabeled plants is time and depending on the plant a safety risk. A fruit tree or bush you will spend 3+ years babying the fruit tree before you see fruit. Nuts can be worse with pecans or other members of the hickory family like walnuts taking upwards or 15 or 17 years. When I say safety risks I am talking about risks like the Chinese Mormon Apricot or Stark Bros Sweetheart apricot where people are not just buying those for the fruit but also buying it for the kernel inside which may be deadly if it is mislabeled.
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@elivings1
I agree with you: it seems many people don’t understand that the cost of a plant is just the down payment.
It’s a pilot error to buy a food for a component its not labeled for.
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I was at the OGW retail facility earlier this year to buy Logan berries. The yard looked well-stocked and the sales area was tidy.
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All of the pawpaws I’ve received from them arrived healthy, but I’ve lost probably half of them overwinter. I’ve had better success with my last purchase by buying them in the fall, letting them go dormant, keeping them in my cold basement, and then planting them when the ground is fully thawed in the spring. The ones I buy mid spring don’t seem to get as good of a footing in time going into the cold season.
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Like I said above all my paw paw were destroyed by animals from One Green World. Their bare root fruit trees are super nice and some one of a kind but their paw paw are a bit small for me taste because of surrounding wildlife. I live in the foothills so there are deer and a lot of animals. My plants need to be big enough of a caliper and size to succeed. Even my bigger trees they nibble on but I need a tree that will recover from that and send out more branches. Then again paw paw don’t do well here anyway because they prefer more humid places.
Many folks on this site are in your situation with regard to wildlife. They protect and prune their trees accordingly. Check out some of the recent threads by Dax (barkslip).
A huge issue with paw paw in general is it is slow growing. I repeatedly heard 7 years for fruit on paw paw. All my other trees seem to grow fast enough to out compete the wildlife so it just becomes natural pruning or are not bothered by wildlife. My persimmon, jujube and Pakistan mulberry have been unbothered by wildlife. Peaches, cherries and almond always seem to get nibbled on but seem to bounce back stronger than ever. With my apricot the tree is not bothered by wildlife but wildlife loves the apricots. Crabapple we don’t eat and wildlife gets to them quickly anyway. I found trees are very hard to protect. Their shoots grow through bird netting so bird netting just hurts the trees when we end up taking it off or gets caught. Also like I said the bigger the tree the more likely it is to get wildlife damage in my area. They like to graze on the smaller low hanging trees that may only be a foot or 2 from the ground and not very thick.