Skip to content
The Nursery LedgerA guide to specialty plant nurseries and mail order growing

Parterre 02 · Plant Specialties

Roses, hostas, orchids and the specialist trades

Own-root against grafted mail order roses, named hostas and virus X, orchids that travel by post: how each specialty trade actually works.

Close view of a bench of young potted roses with dark green leaves and small paper variety tags tied to the canes

A grower who does one family well has learned things a generalist never needs to. The rose trade runs on own-root cuttings and bud-grafted understock, and the choice between them decides how a plant winters. The hosta trade runs on named clones, which is why a virus that hides in saplings of one variety matters to every other. The orchid trade ships bare-root seedlings and mericlones through the post in ways that would kill most houseplants.

These guides explain one specialty at a time: what the trade jargon means, what the plant should look like out of the box, and which questions sort a serious nursery from a repackager. Read the one that matches your current obsession, then order with your eyes open.

In this parterre

  1. Dormant own-root rose plants with polished dark canes and intact root balls laid out on a wooden bench beside bundled grafting ties

    Mail order roses: own-root or grafted

    The rose trade runs on one decision most catalogs reduce to a footnote: own root or grafted. That footnote decides how the plant winters, how it suckers and how it returns after a hard year.

  2. Field rows of named hosta cultivars with broad ribbed leaves and small white variety markers between the plants at a hosta farm

    Buying hostas: eyes, sports and virus X

    The hosta trade runs on named clones raised in fields and divided into eyes. Learn the vocabulary and one virus, and you can buy hostas by mail with complete confidence.

  3. Bare-root orchid plant with clean thick roots wrapped in damp sphagnum moss resting on a bench beside small clay pots and a plant label

    Ordering orchids by mail without surprises

    Orchids travel by post better than almost any houseplant, which is why the species trade lives in mail order. The catch is a vocabulary of flasks, comps and mericlones worth learning first.

Every guide in this parterre reads against the planting calendar by USDA zone, and two neighbouring parterres extend it: Find a Nursery and Ordering by Mail.