Berkeley Horticultural Nursery

With its beautiful and enticing layout, I wish that I felt welcome enough to shop here. I am an avid gardener with extensive plantings of unusual fruiting and flowering varieties. With well over thirty years of experience in gardening, I expect that I will be treated with at least a little respect for the knowledge that I have gained along the way. I don't know which is worse, being bombarded with incorrect information or being put on ignore. Both are prevalent. It's sad because there are a couple of staff members that are really trying to do a good job. Unfortunately they are surrounded by people that appear to dislike their work.

I am an avid gardener that lives in Kensington, CA. I spend at least $1,000 a year at various local and on-line nurseries. So I am extremely familiar with the execellent customer service that I have received throughout the years as a loyal customer at these nurseries.

Berkeley Horticultural Nursery (BHN) is an extremely expensive nursery, and the owner as well as his hired help are unfriendly and unhelpful. Despite my feelings about this retailer, I have spent at least several hundred dollars there a year over a 14 year period, as it is convenient to my home.

Today I took the plant tags of two perennials that I had purchased last summer from BHN, which failed to return this spring, back to BHN for a credit. The owner looked me in the face and told me that he does not guaranty his plants and absolutely refused to give me a $9 credit. He has personally seen me shop at his nursery throughout the years, and he told me he would rather lose my patronage than give me the $9 credit. Obviously, he does not value his loyal customers. I was absolutely shocked that he could lack such business sense as lose me as a customer rather than give me a $9 credit.

We live in an area that has many fantastic nurserys, such as Westbrae Nursery and East Bay Nursery, and even Home Depot and OSH have excellent and inexpensive plant selections. Moreover, every on-line nursery I have purchased from, at least 15 different ones to date, will replace any plant that you are unsatisfied with for any reason or give you your money back, absolutely no questions asked. Additionally, every local nursery will provide you with credit or even return your money if you have a legitimate complaint about your purchases. BHN is the only nursery that absolutely refuses to honor the legitimate complaints of it customers and, at the very least, provide a credit or replace the plant.

BHN is a beautiful nursery, and I will continue to visit it to check out which plants I would like to purchase at other nurseries or on-line. I will never spend another cent there, and I certainly urge everyone else to do the same. Any retailer who doesn't value its customers in an area and time in which the gardener has so many other places to spend its money does not deserve to have any paying customers.

The only thing I can find wrong with this nursery is it's prices. But the prices come along with having excellent staff on hand who are learned botanists. If you are new and want help then this is the place to start.