Supermarkets, B&M etc selling bedding plants

[notedbiscuits]

Every single year during bedding plant season, every supermarket and retailers such as B&M sell bedding plants. They are always look wilted or dead. Such a waste.

A friend who works at a supermarket says that they are delivered on chiller trucks. So these poor plants are grown in greenhouses then transported on trucks which are 1-2c then depending on the supermarket location, either outside in varying temperatures or the air conditioned store. The problem with watering are some trolleys which the plants are transported and on display can’t hold water and dribbles everywhere. Or some stores don’t have time to water plants.

Then she has seen delivery trucks with plants that are squashed. Or had something on top of them.

She says that the store chucks out more bedding plants than what is sold.

So why do supermarkets and retailers who only sell gardening stuff seasonally still sell bedding plants?

AIBU - supermarkets should continue to sell them
AINBU - supermarkets stop selling bedding plants

Re Morrisons, I think they're going downhill in so many ways. Used to be my regular shop, but now I barely go. Never really recovered from Covid really, but our town's store had started to go downhill long before then. I expect Morrisons will have to start closing/selling stores before long, and maybe even the entire chain will collapse as out of all our stores, it's definitely the worst. Even the cafes aren't busy anymore and ours always used to be busy and full around luncthtime. Getting rid of the fish and meat counters was definitely a backward step. They're no different to Aldi, B&M, etc these days.

If they sell them, they'll get more in to replace them. More hassle for everyone involved. As long as they're sitting there unbought it saves the staff work.

I'm always amazed at how they just let them die for lack of water, why can't the store arrange for a staff member to do that every day?

I’ve had some brilliant bedding plants from supermarkets, especially Aldi. Gerberas, lobelia and dahlias for 1/3 the price I paid in garden centres, in really good condition and they’ve lasted all summer. We paid £15 for an olive tree from Tesco about 8 years ago, and it has flourished. It’s unfair to say they’re all bad.

I’ve bought quite a few bedding plants, reduced in price due to looking wilted and dry. Re-potted, watered and fed, most of them do come back to life. It’s worth a gamble
My best bargains were some begonias and petunias in large pots, reduced to 1p each (honestly) in B&Q!

There must be a big regional variation in Morrisons - there are two good-sized stores near me with fresh meat, fish, pizza, cheese and bakery counters, sizeable indoor and outdoor plant sections, always really busy, modern and clean. Both have had recent refurbishments too.

Interestingly, the owner of my local plant shop, which I try to support more than the supermarkets, says that Aldi can be amazing for some plants - they buy up huge quantities of some varieties from the Dutch markets, then sell them on for mad cheap prices. She has a couple of rare monsteras that she couldn't believe were on sale in Aldi for less than she'd pay market price.

I always like a look at the 'shelf of shame' in the garden centre.
you can sometimes pick up a nice plant for pennies that only needs a little water to thrive.
I wouldn't pay good money for a sad, uncared for plant at a supermarket.

Also, if you like a bit of flower arranging, Morrisons is by far the best.

They sell foliage, bouquets of single flower types that you may not find elsewhere and all really reasonably priced. M&S is good too but the one near me isn’t consistent with foliage being available .

Yes, I got a bit carried away by all those 'orchid rescuers' on IG and now I have a sad collection of wonky "75% off" orchids waiting for their second wind which may never come.

In our local area, the worst plants and flowers are definitely Asda - this week they had an entire display of completely dead and dehydrated plants and although I'm not into plants as such, it was really sad to see.

Our local Morrisons is wonderful with their plants, flowers and potted trees and really care for them and there are dedicated staff for those areas.

Our local B&M has a lovely garden centre too where the plants are thriving.

As a whole, I do think if a company (looking at you Asda) aren't going to bother to even try and care for their plants, they shouldn't sell them - huge waste of resources

The plants garden centres buy and the plants supermarkets buy all come in in refrigerated trucks from the same massive nurseries. Garden centres just have bigger markup/less buying power than big chains like Tesco.

Plants are my livilihood, I love plants but I can't get too excited about supermarkets letting bedding plants die. Most people bring them home and let them die too. If people didn't let their plants die I would be out of business pretty quickly.

My sister buys plants that way. She replants them in her garden and 90% of the time they perk up and grow just fine.
All the shops I know that sell them that way water them at various times in the day.

Quite agree. I think the plants should be cared for better, or not sold. Too much is wasted.
However, I’m far more concerned by the lack of respect and care for all the dead living creatures they sell in the store.

I don’t like waste so I don’t think they should sell these plants that are wasted.
However, I find the lack of connection by so many between not caring for “poor plants” and the abuse, slaughter and selling of animals in the stores very disturbing. It’s simply appalling.
if people are unhappy about plants being neglected, how about also caring about animal welfare?

Yes it’s appallingly wasteful, but supermarkets are appallingly wasteful generally. I buy all my plants direct from growers online, and my groceries from farmers markets as far as possible. I can’t stand waste.

This upsets me as well. These supermarkets just treat the plants as disposable commodities, not living things. There's no respect for them or sense that different plants have different needs. I hate seeing them drying up and dying. B&M is particularly bad for this.

I bought some cyclamen plants on Monday, they are amazing. I get all of my plants from Morrisons, they are brilliant and flower for months at a time, I wouldn't buy them from anywhere else.

I wonder if some of the supermarkets do just see them as an overhead - a decorative seasonal feature to attract customers in - and aren't actually bothered about selling them.

For all we know, they may even be doing an Arkwright - deliberately leaving dead, pitiful plants outside, knowing that people will come in specifically to moan about them and get distracted by the amazing offers on bread, beans and bog roll

As for the watering, maybe they just figure that this is the UK, so the weather will do that for them - but even we do occasionally have periods of hot sunshine and extended dry spells!

Yes, it always grates on me when they urge customers to re-use shopping bags (a good thing, of course) and 'do their bit' - but then you see the enormous amounts of unnecessary packaging that they wantonly create.

Do they even send back the cardboard fruit boxes in the empty lorry, to be re-used, or just dispose of them and keep making new ones? That must be the easiest action they could take if they wanted to. And as for wrapping bananas in plastic...

Most produce and fresh meat is delivered in black crates and get sent back to the depot. Doubt that they are washed as seen stickers from various things on them. As lifted cases of produce to get better dated stuff and seen stickers from melons, cucumbers in cases of nectarines. Or on the outside store number and store name of a store 70 miles away

But that is the whole point!

Plants have been grown and then nutured in order to produce the vegetables and fruit you are talking about. They haven't been grown and then left to die before they can even begin to produce something useful.

Of all the evils of wasteful capitalism, it is quite extraordinary to me that anyone would focus on the plight of limp summer bedding plants in supermarkets.

I've been whinging about this for years in supermarkets that sell plants. Why do you bother selling them if you don't even water them and leave them on trollies where as they grow, the become bent over and straggly through lack of room and water?

The usual answer in stores is "we don't have tome" or "no one wants to do it"!

B&M near me used to be very good but not now and Waitrose is the same, used to have lovely healthy plants but now they're just left to dry out at £12 a pot and don't get me started about Aldi and Lidl.

Either look after the plants or don't bother having them. 🤬

Totally agree, it's cruelty to plants! All supermarkets/ stores seem to be guilty of this. I sometimes mention it in Waitrose to the customer service desk but these days there's rarely anyone on duty.
However, it's not just supermarkets that ignore their plants. I walked through a newly landscaped area of Salisbury the other day and there were hundreds of plants waiting for planting which were dead or dying. Must have cost thousands of pounds, council tax payers money and dead before they're in the ground. Disgusting.

I buy bedding plants from Aldi quite often and they always do really well.