Rootin’ ‘Round the Web

I’m waiting for some scented geraniums to arrive from the Internet. I hadn’t planned on ordering them, but a friend and I fell in love with them on a Web site.

We were checking out what the online gardening world had to offer in hopes of making our yards look more like Martha Stewart’s.

We know that online garden shops generally lack the spit and polish of other e-tailers; a lot of the Internet’s plant sellers are just small regional nurseries, probably more used to talking pest control than shipping practices.

But there are plenty of sites to choose from, selling everything from seeds to moose statues for your garden. Even Martha is online with https://www.marthastewart.com.

One of the best places to start is Cyndi’s Catalog of Garden Catalogs (https://www.qnet.com/~johnsonj), which lists hundreds of Web sites and mail-order companies.

My friend had fixated on finding a passionflower vine, so that’s where we began. It’s hard to imagine how the plants will look in your garden from the little pictures on many of the sites. Some have no pictures at all, just descriptions, and sometimes not very descriptive ones at that. The bigger sites, usually mail-order houses that have been in business for years, seemed better equipped with information.

But the more you know before you shop, the better you’ll be at buying the right plants.

That’s probably most important when it comes to knowing your climate zone, which is used to determine whether a plant will grow in your area.

Like many Western gardeners, I know my zone (Zone 20) based on the “Western Garden Book” from Sunset Books (https://www.sunset.com/Sponsors/ Garden/sunsetmonrovia_r1/htmlfiles/botwzones.html). But most garden e-tailers use the plant hardiness zone map from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (https://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone), which uses a numbering system of 1 through 11.

I started at the Web site for Jackson & Perkins (https://www.jacksonandperkins.com), a Medford, Ore., nursery well-known for its roses. The flowers looked nice, but I didn’t need a group of six hedge roses on sale for $29.95 to $59.70.

The site did have a nice feature that allowed me to find out my USDA zone by entering my ZIP code. I learned I was in a 10A zone.

After hemming and hawing over the roses, I logged on to the site one night to buy. But just as I was clicking back to a page, the site was taken down for maintenance. My buying urge died.

The next day, I unearthed an old Jackson & Perkins mail-order catalog and discovered the company did sell passionflowers. Although typing “passionflower” into the site’s search window didn’t turn up any information, typing in the catalog number did.

It didn’t matter, though; after going through a few check-out steps, I was finally informed that it was sold out.

Meanwhile, my friend found Passion Flower Farms (https://www.passionflowerfarms.com) and was pondering a $9.99 purchase. Packed in a 2 1/2-by-3 1/2-inch pot, the flower seemed expensive to her. We also were put off by the lack of shipping information. We couldn’t find any.

We decided to take a break from the Internet. She called local nurseries while I flipped through my new Sunset magazine. There, I saw mention of several sites selling scented geraniums. We were captivated.

We looked at Katiesscenteds.com, Geraniaceae.com and Goodwincreekgardens.com, which, besides the scented geraniums, had small passionflowers for $3.95.

We clicked away in a frenzy on Goodwin Creek’s site, ordering 13 plants in all, including a yummy peppermint-scented geranium. The shipping information was somewhat scant: “We ship plants throughout the year. We will not ship during very hot or cold weather. If you wish to have your plants sent at a specific time period, please let us know. Otherwise, plants will be sent at our discretion.”

We chose three-day UPS shipping ($11.23) and sat back and waited, figuring three days meant three days.

After a week, I called. A nice man told me that our order probably went out the day before. He said that plants are usually shipped on Mondays so they don’t have to sit over the weekend. No, it probably didn’t say that on the Web site, he agreed. And, yes, someone else had complained that the e-mail customer service address didn’t seem to be working (an e-mail I’d sent had bounced back). You should get your plants Friday, he said (11 days after we had ordered them); it takes three days once they leave the nursery.

Well, I’m sure the plants will be nice when they finally arrive. It’s just that you get that urge for immediate gratification once you order. And when you’re trying to compete with Martha Stewart, the sooner the plants get in the ground, the better.

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Buying Plants Online

Cyndi’s Catalog of Garden Catalogs -- www.qnet.com/~johnsonj

Sunset Magazine Plant Zone Guide -- www.sunset.com/Sponsors/Garden/sunsetmonrovia_r1/htmlfiles/botwzones.html

U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Hardiness Zone Map -- www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/

Jackson & Perkins -- www.jacksonandperkins.com

Passion Flower Farms -- www. passionflowerfarms.com

Katie’s Scenteds -- www.katiesscenteds.com

Geraniaceae -- www.geraniaceae.com

Goodwin Creek Gardens -- www. goodwincreekgardens.com

Martha Stewart -- www.marthastewart.com

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Jennnifer Lowe is deputy food editor at The Times.