neurotwitch

plastic plant prisons

What I forgot to mention in my last post is the one thing that really bothers me about getting plants shipped here—and that’s all the plastic packaging that Spring Hill Nursery used to send me my stuff.

Used to be that plants were shipped in plastic or paper pots wrapped in newspaper—sometimes things got a little beaten up, but the packaging was biodegradable for the most part. Spring Hill sent my plants in plastic pots encased in these plastic cases packed in shipping peanuts. Way, way too much packaging, and the plastic was #5, which we can’t recycle here.

My rose, from Wayside, came in a box with peanuts in a plastic pot, but was protected with raffia instead of an industrial-grade plastic über-case and survived the trip beautifully. I could’ve done without the peanuts (don’t mind the starch-based peanuts, but they don’t work well with plants because they dissolve when it gets too humid in the box).

So, I think I’m going to see if I can find a company that uses greener packaging. Or try to buy locally—though prices around here are really high.

And I would love to get some hellebore to live in my garden. Of the ten or so I’ve planted over the past few years here, not one has survived the first winter. And they’re not cheap. Ah well.

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