Contacting Us
If you can, we would prefer you contact
us by
email. We understand that most people prefer talking to a real person,
but we do not have an office staff,
and if we can help it, we never will. This just isn't an office staff
kind of place. We don't have a call center, a phone bank, operators on
duty, and there isn't a cubicle on the entire property. We work outside,
growing plants, we hate cell phones, and so sometimes it's hard to reach us
in person.
And unlike real businesses, we
actually take an occasional day off when things aren't too busy and go
hiking or some other foolish thing. We know it's not text book
customer service, so if you are having a plant emergency we apologize in
advance.
As you may have gathered, I
don't take this stuff that seriously. I know that drives some people crazy,
but I've been this way for a long time and I'm too old to change. Drives my
wife crazy too.
Problem Solving
We make no claims to
infallibility and freely admit that we occasionally make mistakes.
Mistakes generally cost us money, so we try to keep them to a minimum, but
things happen. If we do something stupid, we can usually take care of
it fairly easily. Just tell us what the problem is and we
will try to fix it. If we've done something that has ruined your life,
we are very sorry, but getting mad and yelling at us will not get the
problem fixed any faster.
Questions
I once wrote here that it was
not unusual for us to get 100 email messages a day. Those were the good old
days. Now, because of the people who prowl the web looking for email
addresses, we can easily get a thousand messages a day. Obviously most of
these are spam, but we still have to wade through them to find the real
messages.
If you make the subject of your
email to us "Hostas" or "Bridgewood Gardens Order", there is much less
chance that your message will be deleted by mistake.
I'm sure this sounds rude, but I
simply don't have time to answer all of the questions people send to us.
Questions about orders or plants you purchased from us will be answered
quickly, everything else if time permits.
Before you write, please see the
topics below. Most of the questions we get fall into a few broad
topics and we can answer a lot of them here.
How to take care of plants
you bought somewhere else. You really should be asking the people you
bought your plants from. If you bought your plants from the local
Discount Mart and now you can't find anyone there that knows what a hosta
is, it just goes to show you. Questions about what's wrong with the plants
you bought at your local discount chain store should be directed to
manager@localdiscountchainstore.com.
Questions on design or which
hostas are best for you. Most of these questions I simply
cannot answer. Our job here is to produce and ship hostas and really has
nothing to do with design. What little I do know can be found on our
web pages on garden design and choosing hostas. We have indicated some
of our favorite hostas using red stars in the left column of each catalog
page.
Hostas you can't find in our
catalog or that are sold out. We do not have a secret stash of
hostas that we don't list for sale. If it is not listed, we don't have
it for sale. When we sell out of a plant, we seldom know if or when it
will be available again. It sometimes takes years to build up a stock
of enough plants to list in the catalog, and sometimes when we run out of
one plant, it is replaced by something else. Other times we come
across other growers who have plants available to replenish our stock.
We never know.
We are not capable of keeping
lists of customers who are waiting for certain plants.
The leaves on my hostas (a)
were eaten (b) were cut off (c) have holes, spots, etc, etc, etc If it's
just the leaves and there is no damage to the rhizome, there is nothing you
can or should do. Just
leave them alone and stop worrying about it. Please do not write me to
ask how you can make them grow back faster or make the spots go away.
Identifying unlabeled hostas.
I'm sorry, but I cannot identify hostas from descriptions or even pictures.
There are literally thousands of named hostas and many of them are very
similar in appearance. My guess is just as likely to be wrong as right
and there are already too many mislabeled hostas in the world. The
only hosta I can think of that I can positively identify by a picture is
'Spilt Milk', so if you send me a picture, I will let you know if your plant
is 'Spilt Milk' or not. That's all I can do.
Requesting printed catalogs.
Sorry, but we do not have print catalogs available.
My e-mail address is
chick@bridgewoodgardens.com.
Telephone
Calling us on the telephone is a
little bit trickier, especially in the spring. We really do want to answer
all your phone calls on the second ring. On the other hand, we don't want to
sit in the office all day waiting for the phone to ring. And every
time we think about hiring someone to answer phones all day, we think how
much better it would be to have another person outside growing hostas.
So we hired an answering machine. If you leave a message, we will try to
call you back as soon as we notice the little red light blinking. If
you just hang up and call back later, you are likely to get very frustrated.
Your best chance at reaching us in person on the first try is around 9AM,
when we open the office, but even that's not a sure thing. If you're never
around to answer the phone either, we give up pretty quickly, so an email
would be best. Our phone number is (540) 631-9311. And if you leave
us a message, please speak slowly and spell the hard words.
If you don't like ordering on
line, the FAX may be the easiest way to place an order if you don't have any
questions. If you include your E-mail address, we will normally
acknowledge your order the same day. FAX transmissions don't always
come through clearly, so please print in big letters. Our FAX
number is (540) 631-9414.
Mailing Address
Our mailing address is:
Bridgewood Gardens
PO Box 391
Strasburg, VA 22657
Is that customer friendly, or
what?
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