Great Garden Plants Grade: A
Overall Rating: 93
Top 20 Rank: #1
Our recommendation: Good place to buy
Website: www.greatgardenplants.com
Location: Grand Haven, MI
Why do we list location? This is so you can know, in most cases, where the evergreen shrubs you buy are coming from.
We evaluate and score 10 different categories. You can read details on what each category means and how we score it here.
Great Garden Plants Nursery Review
Great Garden Plants rating has kept them as our #1 ranked online nursery! They carry a wide selection, have good prices, and deliver quality plants. They care about plant quality and it shows. The one caution is to look at their shopping schedule here: https://www.greatgardenplants.com/pages/shipping-policy Located in Michigan, they have pretty much suspended shipping until mid-March.
We have placed two orders on greatgardenplants.com in mid-April 2021. Our Great Garden Plants unboxing pictures and review is here.
The woman who owned Great Garden Plants and her husband, have good reputations within the industry. Having worked in the online plant nursery business for 12 years, you see a little bit of everything. I’ve never met them, but they seemed to care genuinely.
They both retired and sold their business in January 2019 to a subsidiary of Spring Meadow Nursery. Spring Meadow is also family operated and they also have a very good reputation within the industry. Spring Meadow is a grower/propagator. They do not sell retail.
New Site Design
Great Garden Plants debuted a new website design a few years ago. They put a lot of thought & time into the new platform. There are a lot of new features available. It’s great stuff, plant calculator, plant spacing chart, more info link to explain plant sizes, and even a small image similar to plant soil tags you see in garden centers that shows height, sun, etc.
I traded a few emails with their Marketing Director. We had a great discussion and it is frankly refreshing to talk to someone in the industry who has such a strong passion and commitment.
Wide Selection
GreatGardenPlants.com seems to have a larger focus on perennials and ground covers but they do have a decent selection of evergreen shrubs. Evergreen trees & shrubs are listed together.
The sizes available online at Great Garden Plants range from 3” pots to 1-gallon sizes. That is a good range of sizes, just smaller than you can find on other sites. Their prices, however, are great!
We had mentioned in the past that we contacted Great Garden Plants customer service via email twice with no response. Their Marketing Director explained that between COVID-19 and the incredible growth in online sales, they were being reactive and had experienced some growing pains. I’ve been on the marketing side for online nurseries for 10+ years. I get it. It’s not easy to get people trained to learn about the plant world and throw them into the fire answering email or phone questions.
There are not a lot of Google reviews, Just 52 with a 4.2 average rating is a little worrisome. We looked at just the 1 & 2-star rated reviews and they are from 2020. Right around the time the new platform debuted their sales grew faster than they expected. Literal growing pains.
They are also utilizing a third-party review service called Judge Me. That has 9,182 reviews with a 4.29 average rating. You can read the Great Garden Plants Reviews here.
No Risk 60-Day Guarantee
Their guarantee is similar to Garden Crossings. In other words, it is pretty good. They have a 60 60-day guarantee that offers a refund, not a store credit. “We guarantee that you will be satisfied with your purchase and that your plants will arrive healthy, free of pests and diseases, and true to name. They ask you to send a picture, but as long as you notify them within 60 days, they will offer a refund of the product(s) cost. You can read the details here: https://www.greatgardenplants.com/pages/our-guarantee
They also brag about their plants having larger root systems. “We ship jumbo size plants with hefty root systems that outperform smaller plants obtained from other mail order nurseries.”
Overall, quality people running a good site.
A+ From The Better Business Bureau!
Great Garden plant BBB listing has just 9 complaints over the past 3 years. That is an incredibly low number considering the number of sales they generate. You can view the Great Garden Plants BBB file report here.
Great Garden Plants Frequently Asked Questions
Disclaimer
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About the Author
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