Knowing Your Growing Zone & Why We Buy Locally

We’ve seen a lot of misinformation coming to the nursery this year. It’s been incredible. People coming in wanting these butterfly hostas and these rainbow hostas. I’m like, they’re not real.

So if you ever want to know if it’s real, snap a picture, bring it into the nursery. We’ve got a ton of employees at the nursery that have over 20 years experience. Longer than AI. And so that knowledge base is huge for knowing also what’s successful.

I’ve had a lot of people come in and ask for the Encore Azaleas. The Encore Azaleas are a Zone 6 plant. We tried them about 10 years ago twice, and both times had no better than a 50% loss rate with them. We will not carry that plant because it is not hardy here for enough people.

Now, if you have that perfect microclimate, like a brick home, like a cove, and it’s on the east side of the house, protected from the winter wind, and you spray it with a wilt-proof in the wintertime, there are ways to get it to grow here. But you have to have that perfect environment. And let’s face it, most of us don’t. And so there’s just no reason to sell a plant that someone’s not going to have success with and then be frustrated. And it’s not their fault. That plant doesn’t grow well here.

Another one is called Abelia, and it’s another shrub that we’d tried in the past, 10, 15 years ago. We tried it multiple seasons to make sure it wasn’t just a one-year problem. That plant does not grow here for the vast majority of people. And so those are plants that we have chosen purposely not to carry, because we want our customers to have success with what you’re planting. We don’t like to sell disappointments.

It depends what zone map you look at for our zone. Technically, a lot of zone maps classify northeast Ohio as Zone 6, but we are Zone 5. We’re kind of old school. We stick with Zone 5. And see, they take an average to tell you what zone you’re in. The plant doesn’t care about the average. The temperature is all that matters to that plant. And so back in 2000, I think it was 2010, we had almost a Zone 4 winner. And that year, I mean, we had Weeping Cherries die, Rhododendrons die, even things classified as Zone 5 struggled that year. So Zone 6 is out. It’s an annual here.

And it’s just a lot of money to spend on shrubs that we want you to be successful. The cost of the shrubs, and we try to buy as much of these shrubs locally as we can. You know, Lake County area, there’s like 100 nurseries up there. We buy from a lot of those. We buy from another nursery over on the east side of Cleveland in Avon and up in Huron counties. And these plants, generally, shrubs are going to be in that five- year range. That means they’ve survived five Ohio winters. Trees are going to be closer to seven or ten depending on the size of the tree. But again, that’s five or seven or ten Ohio winters. That plant made it through. All the weak ones died off in the growing process. And same with our perennials, we get those as locally as we can.

Now, it does make that plant a little bit more expensive than buying it from like Georgia or Florida. We will not buy down there for trees and shrubs. Now our tropical stuff does come in from there sometimes, the house plants and such. Tropicals are the only exception. But the house plants are in your house in the winter, so hardiness isn’t really an issue with those. And that’s where they’re from. Florida is going to grow the best.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).