Mystery Garden Store on Etsy

[MateoinLosAngeles]

If you're anything like me, you think of Etsy as the last resort to get your plants.

I always order from nurseries and stores that have been in business for a long time, especially after having pretty disappointing results from small/hobby sellers, maybe I'll write those reviews some day.

When looking for a vendor that carried polychilos phalaenopsis, someone on Facebook messaged me to recommend "Mystery Garden Store" an Etsy-exclusive store. They have reasonable prices and rotate their stock frequently, but most importantly... were the plants good?

Well, they were, I have made 3 purchases over the course of a year, on different seasons. Shipping is fast, via USPS, the plants arrived perfectly, clear recent imports potted in sphagnum. The cool thing is they sell mostly mature plants out of bloom, so all of my purchases from them are currently in spike. Every vendor is different on this regard, a seedling from Hausermann is definitely years behind a seedling from SVO. In this case, they were sold as "Near Blooming Size" which for some vendors can be 1-2 years, so it was nice to get these plants and not have to wait half a decade for a spike!

I have a pretty good handle of polychilos Phals by now, so under my culture I can say that all of them have grown glossy leaves and are spiking, there haven't been any laggards that could be chalked up to receiving a sick or poorly grown plant. They actually all arrived with decent root systems, and even one that seemed a slow seller (a expensive-ish gigantea hybrid) and arrived with a less than stellar root system due to what seemed like old, waterlogged sphagnum, still adapted well to a repot and has been pushing through since I received it. It is also in spike.

Better and worse purchases happen with any vendor, I can say that the only vendor that has never sold me a plant that was "less than stellar" is Fred Clarke. Every other vendor has always, one way or another, sold me something that maybe they shouldn't have. But I think one of the perks of this Etsy store is that they're basically a pass-through, they get plants, they sell plants, so they might not be under their care for long enough to get screwed. To me, that is a perk.

I can't speak to their customer service quality, as I've never contacted them, and I also don't know how the quality of their other plants is, as I've only ordered Phals from them. However, I hope this review opens up the world of Etsy to other growers who might be on the fence about purchasing from an obscure seller.