Recently a customer came in to tell me a tale about their experience ordering plants online.

The following is the description of what sounds like a nice fall flowering perennial to complement fall mums, asters and kale. This plant come from the “American Beauties Native Plants” line of plant, “Solidago rugosa Fireworks.”

It is spectacular in its ability to light up the late summer and fall garden, due to its explosive bloom and its magnetic attraction of birds and butterflies. Deep green foliage forms a tight, clean mound in the garden with multiple stems, each topped with 12-18 inch long arching, spreading strings of flower buds by late July.

Buds open in early to mid-August revealing incredible strings of bright yellow flowers that cover the plant and continue in color well into September.

Loads of butterflies, especially Monarchs, make a beeline to this plant when in bloom, while a whole array of colorful birds find the seed from spent flowers an incredibly tasty treat.

“Fireworks” is easy to grow, tolerant of hot sun and dry soils, and provides a searing mass of color when planted in groups.

This sounds like a real winner, but when my customer received the plant liners that she ordered and grew them last year, what she found was quite surprising.

At first she thought maybe her plants died and weeds grew instead or maybe she received the wrong plants. So she contacted the company about her plants and was referred to the fine print at the bottom of the online page she ordered from that stated, “this plant has gotten a bad reputation from its relationship to the Goldenrod garden weed, but it deserves a feature spot in the American Beauties garden.”

This plant was a hybrid goldenrod, not just the regular kind. So be careful what you order online or through a catalog or you may end up with some “Taraxacum officinale,” otherwise known as the common dandelion.

Companies even try to sell these plants to unsuspecting garden centers as well and they are quite successful at it due to the employee shortages that are across the country. Many garden centers have new staff that just do not know the Latin names for plants, which is a very important thing to know.

Many plants have multiple common names like Virginia Bluebells, Trout Plant, and Lungwort, all are common names for Pulmonaria. My grandmother used to call it trout plant because of the speckled leaves like the side of a brook trout.

In the mid-Atlantic states, Virginia bluebells are the popular name. And lungwort came from the fact that back in ancient times the plant was considered medicinal, hence the Latin, Pulmonaria. So it pays to talk to someone who knows what plants are what, because you cannot believe everything you read.

I, myself, while visiting another garden center, saw a tag on an arborvitea that stated it was deer resistant. Nothing could be further from the truth, arborvitea are deer candy. We sell plenty of them but always let customers know that they need to be fenced or sprayed to keep them safe from the deer.

Maybe in certain parts of the country deer won't bother them, but here in the northeast, they love them.

One last note, start preparing your flowerbeds and garden now for a very hot summer. So far this year we have already had two days over 90 degrees, which matches the whole summer last year.

Your plants will need more water during these hot days and soaker hoses are better than sprinklers for doing this. Stop by and I will tell you why.