We start every new year with relatively little inventory and build it every week in January and February. We bring in full truckloads of trees and shrubs from Oregon, California, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida and of course growers in Texas. Our hardline merchandise, insecticides, soils, fertilizers etc. comes in every week. Both of these categories do not get damaged or die if the weather is cold. Not so of the annuals and color plants that we will carry. If we stock up heavily in January or early February and have our seasonably cold temps for a month we will lose a lot of it. We had warm weather this week and even though we had great sales we get questions on why we don't have a nursery chock full of warm weather annuals, vegetables, perennials and tropical plants. Even if we wanted to fill up the nursery with these items we would have a hard time finding them because the local growers time most of their warm weather crops to start becoming available in late February. Growers cannot afford to hold plants for too long a time. I don't know if this fully explains our dilemma at this time of the year but I just want our customers to know it isn't apathy on our part but it is prudence that prevents us from having an early warm weather inventory.

In my last blog I announced the publishing of a new online website that garden center shoppers can rate nurseries in and around Houston. This is the first comprehensive survey and ratings system for rating nurseries ever. So far, 17 of the 20 garden centers have been rated and Enchanted Gardens has requested that I add them to the ratings list. I am having a great time watching the dynamics of these nursery ratings from day to day. So far the independent, owner operated garden centers are way out in front of the box stores and multi-location nurseries. This is not a survey to find the nurseries that sell the most product or makes the most money. This ratings system is trying to determine who provides the best to their customers. May the best nursery win!