My longstanding dream has all Negative feedbacks!! Help!

Dear Daves Gardeners,

Help!! Have you ever held onto a garden catalog for years and you think to yourself, “One day, it will be mine”?? Well, I have been holding onto this little crape myrtle catalog from crapemyrle.com forever and finally decided that I need to get my ducks in a row for my front garden. I wanted to plant miniature red mounding Crape Myrtles in a front yard border and I was just honing in on the variety I wanted to order. They are supposed to bloom profusely and for months on end, and the price seemed very reasonable. I was surprised that the prices had not gone up since I ordered the booklet catalog.

Thank Goodness I searched Garden Watchdog first!!! This company has all NEGATIVE feedback, and there is more negative feedback online in other forums!! Turns out, the owner is awful and the plants are even worse. He has moved from one state to another and is still at it and the BBB can't do a thing. Unbelievable… Well, I’m glad to find out now and not afterwards. However, I still want to plan on getting these miniature crape myrtles from another company. Problem is I can’t find one. If you google crape myrtle, the first 20 or so links take you to the same bad news seller… He has many different web addresses, all in Florida and all offering the same thing. The only other "crape myrtle" seller on Garden Watchdog that I found, has a much better feedback, 50% positive, but I wanted to get a little higher rating if possible. :) Any suggestions as to what I can do, where I can shop? Or are these plants overrated and I’ve been sold on them too? Your help is greatly appreciated, as always.

Sincerely,

Susan

This message was edited Dec 30, 2007 2:52 AM

Bummer. Susan. Maybe someone will know a good source.

Can you post here the specific crepe myrtles you want? That might help.

Susan,

You might want to try Forest Farm at www.forestfarm.com. I just checked their catalog and they have quite a few crape myrtles and some dwarfs. They show a dwarf red 'Victor' in the catalog.

I ordered from there a while ago and they were great.

One summer I went through our garden and took cuttings from various woody plants around the end of May or early June for a neighbor. He struck them in the ground under a tent of that plastic that has poochy air holes some people like to "pop", and said that the crepe myrtle cuttings were one of the easiest to root. (Ours is Lagerstroemia 'Natchez', which unfortunately for small gardens, makes a tree at least up to 25'.)

So, why not see if you can acquire some crepe myrtle cuttings from other DG folks late next spring? Might be worth a try. (Personally, I swear by recycled glass jars for rooting cuttings in the ground.)

PS -- Ditto to Kathy T - everything we've ordered from Forest Farm in the past has been great, too.

Crepe myrtles are extremely easy to root from cuttings...I've got a yard full...mostly for free.

I have none of the low ,dwarf forms though. If you find a company that sells them and the quality and price are high....just buy a couple and use them for parent stock. It might take a bit, but it makes the higher price more justified.

Thanks all! I did go to the forestfarm web site and did find the Victor. I actually have a large 1 acre yard and only wanted to get dwarf crape myrtle since it seemed to have such a prolonged bloom time and I need to repeat something in a large border. Since I posted this, I have been also looking at the tree peonies as well. Maybe I'll do both! They are incredible too! I am going to place an order for some of the dwarf crape myrtles and start to propagate them.

Thanks

Susan

This message was edited Dec 30, 2007 2:53 AM

great solution Susan, I'm glad you did some research before you got burned.