Pure and total fraud. if you read my review i posted they are for sure TyTy and operate their business from a mailbox at a UPS store. which makes the below statements lies and fraud.
If you read the About Us:
Prepper Gardens was founded by Preppers just like you, who saw the need to grow plants that return annually and have benefits that most modern landscape plants lack. Most plants offered to the Prepping community are seeds to grow vegetables, and while this is important from a nourishment standpoint it is also very labor intensive. Having access to plants that can be used for food, medicine, protection, and attracting wildlife is crucial in the survival of you and your family, and Prepper Gardens was created for exactly this purpose.
We have over 12 years of industry experience, we are members of Pi Alpha Xi (Horticulture Honor Society) at UGA, and we are Preppers at heart. We strive to provide the best plants and customer service for all of our customers. The plants listed are hand-selected and have multiple uses, providing healthy organic food sources, protection, and medicine, and we will continue to update our offerings.
Here is a list from awhile back…they at one point had about 20 websites going.
Trees and Shrubs Depot is their newest… i think. (due to folks loving Fast Growing Trees).
They will have many more websites depending on catchy terms… maybe Growing Fruit Nursery if it becomes popular enough or possibly Hobby Fruit Growers Nursery.
The prepper one was during covid when everyone was at home with uncertain futures… they capitalized hard on that.
I will say that nearly every time i find a nice new small nursery operation they are often reasonably priced and have stellar user reviews on daves garden, whereas lots of times the big companies and massive corporate opertions have loads of bad reviews. Not always the case but I encounter it enough it seems
I gotta say that i think i have ordered from more nurseries than most on here…even Ebay/Etsy/ Marketplace and also Amazon even Walmart…as well as privately dealing with many many folks that i dont really even know on Facebook…not to mention overseas.
In all the money that i have spent and all the folks i have dealt with… i think i can say that the only folks that have ripped me off were Willis and TyTy… They sell some things that nobody else does and i knew going in that it was a risk. But yes they both flat out ripped me off.
I am super happy with my cheap trees from Cumberland Valley Nursery and Vaughn… even though a few folks on here dont like cheap trees… Get a catalog from them for sure
Avoid G Madewell Nursery. Ordered a peach got some unknown plant. When I called, they refused to do anything unless I shipped the original plant back. Wasn’t worth it.
Well I have an order in with G.Madewell Nursery. I reckon it’ll be here sometime in October. I perhaps should have checked here first . But look at it this way, you all will get to see pictures of what I receive when I receive them. And also be the first to know of any interactions I have with G. Madewell Nursery.
No nursery is perfect. Members here have taken time to warn other members of their bad experience about nurseries that have far more negative reviews that positive ones.
You have been fortunate with Willis Orchard. Good for you. A lot more people were not.
Years ago I bought quite a few grape vines from Willis without issue, but it’s been 10+ years and I think grape vines are perhaps more durable for shipping than bare root trees.
My first every rootstock and scionwood purchase was from Fedco. Came USPS in a long box. The mail.lady handed me the box with root stock tips sticking out of one of the corners. The box looked like a few gorilla were playing with it. As she handed me the box, the tips caught her window and several snapped. It didn’t matter none though, since the tops were pruned off anyways. So I never called Fedco to let them.know. I could have refused the gorilla stomped packed though, but I didn’t do that either.
Another order of bareroot trees got delayed 3 times in Memphis UPS hub. What should have been 2 day late spring delivery, turned into 7 days. I could just imagine that box sitting in the back of a trailer, getting cooked.
But when our local UPS driver delivered them, he said fruit trees?, I said yep, he said let’s look at them? He waited while I opened the box. They were OK, still green whips. If they would not have been OK I know he would have helped me return them. Because he’s a good guy, I know him well.
Fact is I’m new to orcharding and I appreciate the vast knowledge and experience here . But If I think about what goes into getting a tree from ordering online, till it gets here to put in the soil. There’s a lot that could go wrong along the way and I’m sure it does.
Getting the tree you ordered, alive and healthy is the goal. If not, then you really need the company to stand behind their product and work with you on a solution to remedy the issue. By either issuing you a refund or replacement that is true to what you ordered, alive and healthy.
Ordered from shrubs and trees this spring. Did not know new tyty company until after receipt of wrong varieties. Ordered red pakistan mulberry and tropic gold apricot. Received white pakistan and unknown. Definitely not an apricot. The white was very nice and less than half what they sell for in Houston. Gave the unknown to a family member. Ordered the correct varieties from kali nursery.
Dave’s Garden/Garden Watchdog is good, but won’t have ALL nurseries/vendors listed. Many years ago (I’m talking back in the late 1990s to early 2000s), the ‘real’ reviews (not glowing reviews posted by the folks at TyTy) were so overwhelmingly negative (but grounded in truth!) that TyTy threatened legal action against the folks at Dave’s… and they folded, removing all references to TyTy and the chicanery they practice. At one point, there were over 20 ‘named entities’ that TyTy had as fronts… Many were Aaron’s or Patrick’s this-or-that Nursery.
I’m thinking Willis is totally unrelated to TyTy, other than the operator having (I think) cut his teeth as a TyTy employee before venturing out on his own.
There are and have been good quality nurseries in Georgia, and across the Southeast.
I tried to change my order for this winter at Tyty online as there is a section for that. My shipping date is shown as January 2024. When I select the button to change the order it says it’s shipped.
Still waiting on an email reply to my request and complaint that you can’t call them at all at the moment.
This type of nursery, once you paid, you cannot reach them.
When I first started, I was confused between Autumn Ridge and with Burnt Ridge. With my luck, I ordered my trees from Autumn Ridge. Bad experience.
Those nurseries with questionable reputation,( some down right awful), they have paid enough to have their names come up on top of most search engine, particular Google. Many new people are fooled that way.
My own experience with Willis has been pretty bad.
Of the brambles I ordered from them, one order was completely dead, but that’s ok because I ordered a thorny, trailing variety and they sent me something thornless and erect, and the other order had one plant die and two live–but they sent me Asian wineberries, not what I ordered, not even close…
For trees, mine arrived desiccated and dull, with barely any signs of life. After several months a few buds broke, but it’s looking like it’s not going to make it. The species appears correct, who knows what variety it is though (given their 0/2 track record, I’m not very confidant).
Customer service is alright, they’ve mostly given me credit for what I ordered. However, They only credit back list price, and their shipping costs are inflated pretty badly, so I only get a portion of what I spent back, and it’s a store credit, so I have to spend more money with them and pay their overpriced shipping again. I suspect this is intentional–they know customers will be unhappy and that they’ll have to give refunds or something, so they keep list prices low and pad the shipping costs so that, even on a store credit order, they’re probably breaking even.
I mean, at least I can admire their creativity. It’s hard to cheat people this effectively.
Tyty got back to me and changed out my Black Beauty mulberry to Hood Pear.
Since I’m picking another mulberry from somewhere else and some questioned what “Black Beauty mulberry” really is.
They credited back the difference in the order.
Having said some things about the actual product upon delivery and it’s survival, or not, at least the two folks in customer service I’ve been dealing with this summer have been quite responsive and helpful.
. But look at it this way, you all will get to see pictures of what I receive when I receive them. And also be the first to know of any interactions I have with G. Madewell Nursery.