Review of Piccadilly Farm
January 1998
by Steven C. Chamberlain
105 Academy Street
Manlius, NY 13104
Steve_Chamberlain@isr.syr.edu
Piccadilly Farm
1971 Whippoorwill Road
Bishop, GA 30621
(706) 769-6516
1998 Price List - $1.00
Owners: Sam and Carleen Jones, Jeff Dawson, Members AHS
Piccadilly Farms offers a select list of hostas and two species of hellebores. They claim to be 'the largest producer of garden ready Hellebores'.
The hostas I have purchased in the past from Piccadilly Farm are:
All of these plants are thriving in the garden. For 1998, I have ordered hellebores in quantity.
The 1998 price list includes 132 hosta cultivars and species. Three of these, H. 'Piccadilly Blue', H. 'Piccadilly Sentinels', and H. 'Piccadilly Snow Mound' appear to be unregistered introductions not available elsewhere. There are no descriptions given, only prices. Additional older cultivars are available in the retail sales area, but are not listed for sale by mail order. All of the hostas offered appear to be pot-grown, tissue-cultured plants. Those I have received have been large divisions with adult leaves.
Prices tend to be extremely reasonable. The most expensive hosta listed is H. 'Whirlwind' for $30. Five dollars can purchase H. 'Anne Arett', H. 'Blue Umbrellas', H. 'Hadspen Heron' or H. 'Saishu Jima', for example. H. 'Daybreak', H. 'Abiqua Moonbeam', H. 'Spritzer', and H. 'Valerie's Vanity' are among those available for $10. For $20 you can get, among others, H.'Carnival', H. 'El Capitan', H. 'June' and H. 'Moon River'. Payment by check must accompany the order. Piccadilly Farm does not accept credit cards for mail orders. Plants are shipped by UPS from April to October.
Plants are shipped bareroot. All of them have arrived here in excellent condition and have made the transition to the garden easily. Piccadilly Farm is one of the southern hosta growers sometimes mentioned in gossip about foliar nematodes, i.e. "be careful, some of their plants have foliar nematodes". I have not found this to be true in any of the hostas I have received from them. Furthermore, my experience in the north (zone 5a) is that foliar nematodes produce visible symptoms only late in the season and can be rather easily controlled by cleaning up the leaves and removing them from the property (rather than composting them) promptly in the fall.
The price list also includes hybrids of Helleborus orientalis that are available in 4-inch pots for $4 each or in flats of 25 for $3 each.
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