Who Buys From TN Nursery? A Look at Our Wholesale Clients and What It Says About Plant Quality
TN Nursery sells plants to the movie and television industry‚ the National Park Service‚ the Smithsonian Institution‚ private landowners throughout Louisiana and the Southeastern United States‚ and thousands of homeowners and landscapers who buy directly from our website․ The plants must be properly identified‚ healthy‚ able to withstand being shipped through the mail‚ and suited to a specific geographic region or time period․ That's a harder standard to meet than most people realize‚ so let's explore why that is․
Why Production Companies Need More Than ""Nice-Looking"" Plants
The History Channel has gotten plants from us for productions they do on historical reenactments․ To do a time-lapse piece on an era‚ you have to have plants that are right for a particular period and right for that section of American history․ That's one of the harder things we do․ If we're doing a Colonial-era scene‚ we can't use a cultivar bred in the 1970s or a species that came to North America in the 1800s․ But surely somebody knows when a plant was first introduced and where it originated‚ not just when it happened to be available for sale at a garden center․
But that level of specificity is the same as with any serious native plant order: you don't just pick something that looks right‚ you check to see if it is local‚ and if it is local to a particular ecosystem․
Regional Native Plants: The Troy Landry Example
We shipped natives to Troy Landry on the History Network's Swamp People for his private land and some commercial work․ The Louisiana swamps grow a completely different plant palette from the Tennessee swamps (bald cypress‚ buttonbush and swamp milkweed‚ an obligate wetland plant liking standing water and the high humidity of the Gulf Coast‚ as opposed to the clay soils and freeze-thaw cycles of the Tennessee zones 6b and 7a)․
Here is where many online nurseries fail․ They may sell you a ""wet soil"" plant that‚ not knowing it hates brackish water intrusion‚ is wet for a lot of the year‚ or is okay with the bayou muck's pH․ This kind of distinction is needed for sourcing native plants for wetland restoration efforts․
Public lands and historic grounds
We have contributed trees and shrubs to the Washington Monument grounds work National Park Service conservation work‚ and plant material to the Black Bear Jamboree in the Smoky Mountains․ Certain national locations and public places have specific requirements as far as plants and how to establish them․ It must also survive on very little attention․ After all‚ who is going to bother baby-sitting a shrub struggling to establish itself during its first season? This usually means cultivating native or naturalized plants with well-established root systems instead of more flamboyantly ornamental plants requiring constant tending․
The Smithsonian Institution has also been a patron for plant material from us‚ usually in those cases where science and documentation were paramount considerations․
What This Means If You're Ordering for Your Own Yard
The standard to be applied to a national monument or a television series is‚ mutatis mutandis‚ the same one that would be applied to the homeowner in Nashville or Knoxville ordering a dozen ferns for a shady slope․ You want:
However‚ if the introduction of a likewise named ""creeping phlox"" actually refers to a different species of Phlox‚ perfect systematic design based on bloom time and spread may be compromised․
Regionally appropriate stock․ An example might be a mild zone 8 winter in Tennessee and the same plant dying during the next hard winter three years later․ We grow and ship all material suited for USDA zones 5 through 9‚ which covers most of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic‚ though do check your zone on the marginal things before ordering․
The best shipping time for bare-root shrubs and trees is late November to early March (when transplant shock is the least‚ and root establishment the greatest‚ before new growth is initiated in spring)․ Container and potted perennials may be shipped at any time from spring to early fall․ Anything planted in the heat of a Tennessee July gets a lot more watering in its first month․
Site and plant specific aftercare is often recommended‚ though in general newly planted native and perennial plantings should be watered every two or three days․
