We've gotten notification of two significant crop failures in the Unusual Plants section. These are also visible in Find Plants for the specific plants.
Sadly, all of the lady's slipper hybrids (U017–U034) that we imported from Germany died. This also happened last year. After our previous grower retired, our grower since last year is still learning how to get these through the winter in containers from the bareroots that arrive in November. We apologize to all the lady's slipper fans who were looking forward to acquiring one.
The other failure is the woody peonies (U049–U053). In this case, the roots needed for the peonies did not arrive at our grower. The Itoh peonies are unaffected by this and should be available.
We apologize for these and the other individual crop failures that will happen at this year's sale (and every year). Crop failures happen for a number of reasons:
- The seed did not germinate as expected (some plants are harder to germinate than others)
- The grower did not receive the seeds or cuttings needed from their supplier (usually because their supplier had a crop failure)
- The plants were not large enough to sell at our very early sale
- Some shrubs and perennials, which often are over-wintered outdoors, may not have survived the winter
There are also partial crop failures, in which case we get a much smaller number of a plant than we expected because of limited germination or winter loss, and then it sells out very quickly.
In the last 10 years of the sale, crop failures have been no more than 5% of the plants listed each year, on average. But we know it's hard when it's a plant you were looking forward to. We were too!