Since starting plant lust six years ago, it has been our dream to help independent nurseries sell their plants online. While most nurseries have their own websites, many don’t have online shopping carts. Even fewer work just as well on a smartphone, even as we see more and more online shopping happening on small screens. Building these things can take resources small nurseries don’t always have. Time, money, the desire to spend hours in front of a computer.
We hoped to give small nurseries a hand with a mobile friendly shop, sparing them the time and expense that usually comes along with building such things.
Garden nuts that we are, we also wanted a nice place to ogle all of the plants, and place our catalog orders all in one spot, without filling out a dozen different order forms. We wanted an online marketplace for plants that’s just as easy as shopping on Amazon.
Until today, the plant lust site was window shopping only. To buy plants, you had to do the leg work to order from multiple nurseries to get all the plants on your wish list. Today is different. Today is big. Today we are finally opening the plant lust store and shipping our first plants!
We are starting small, partnering with three of our longtime trusted nurseries, as we all learn the ropes of this new way of ordering plants. You’ll see a Buy Now button on available plants.
Plants that aren’t yet for sale will continue to offer notification once available. If you requested notification for a plant that we now have available, an email is headed your way.
In our library of 33,000+ plants from 90 nurseries, we’re opening with about 1,000 plants this week. When it’s all running smoothly and we know we can handle a bigger number without slowing down, that list will grow.
Before we opened the site for public sales, naturally we had to sample our own product. What could we do? We had to order a bunch of plants. For business.
It was such a fun day, when those first test orders arrived in the mail. Each nursery swears by their own tried and true method of packaging plants. It’s a true art form.
Everything arrived in beautiful condition.
It would be wrong to show you shipping boxes full of plants without sharing what was inside.
I’ve developed an obsession with the orange flowering Edgeworthia chrysantha ‘Akebono’ ever since I saw Loree’s shot of this exceptionally charming specimen at the Chinese garden. Something about meandering branches gets me every time.
I’ve always dreamed of having a monster Gunnera. Last year’s hot dry summer and a wild trampling puppy did mine in, so I’m giving Gunnera chilensis another try in a more protected location. I hope to update you with a photo of me standing under it’s towering foliage some day.
And my favorite tuck-it-anywhere, no-such-thing-as-too-many plant, I got a trio of Libertia peregrinans.
There are many days (and months and years) of work behind us, and many more ahead to reach the point where all of our plants are available for sale. We’ve long been pursuing this dream of helping plant lovers discover and support independent nurseries. We’ve been pushed along the way to sell ads and secure investment funding, but we felt it was important to stay focused on the plants, the nurseries, and the gardeners, which are the reason we started plant lust in the first place. I’m damn proud to be part of a Portland based, women-owned, self-funded tech start up that helps grow the nurseries we love, in a way that we believe in.
Happy spring plant shopping!