plantscout

I think the plantscout is really great. It is one of the first places I look now when I need anything. Is there any way to tell how long a vendor has been on the plantscout? Or sort the companies from oldest to newest? When it first started, I was keeping track of new vendors joining, but now I have lost track completely.

it is a wonderful feature; however, my experience has been that about 50% when I have contacted vendor they've told me they never carry/carried the plant. How is this updated? seems like a massive undertaking given everybody's extensive inventory.

You always check GWD to see the ratings of the vendor and get an idea that way how long they have been around. Vossner, the vendors are resposible for keeping their inventory up to date on PlantScout. I am pretty sure Dave or Terry don't control that aspect of it. That's the vendors responsibility. I know Terry does help lots of the vendors get their plants added to PlantFiles if they are not in there already but would have no way to monitor if the vendor sold out of the plant etc.

Yep. With a few exceptions, most PlantScout vendors provide us with a spreadsheet of their items for the initial "load".

If they no longer carry the item, they can completely delete it from their listing, or temporarily disable it (for seasonal items.) They can also provide us with a totally updated spreadsheet at any time.

There are a few vendors that don't have an initial spreadsheet - for those we manually "scrape" their site to retrieve their inventory, then ask them to review the inventory list and confirm its accuracy and completeness.

Once a vendor's items are loaded, we or they can download a spreadsheet from PlantScout, which makes it easy for them to update it whenever they need to.

thanks for the explanation. Too bad some don't maintain, but I can understand it, with a million things going on at their nurseries, all at the same time. Still an excellent resource. Even when not updated regularly by some vendors, it has always provided me with a good starting point.

I was just wondering how it all worked.