Tucked into the woods and staffed by super-friendly people, Rainfrost Nursery is a haven of creative inspiration for the avid gardener and a tranquil respite for the harried or overheated who come to just walk among nature.
Rainfrost is the area's best-stocked and most enjoyable plant nursery, offering myriad trees, shrubs, grasses, perennials, annuals, herbs and ground covers as well as garden supplies such as fertilizer, potting soil, mulch, work gloves and tools. The nursery also offers landscape design services, plant installation and delivery of plants too large to cram into the back of the SUV.
Plant selection is good - you'll find several varieties of, say, magnolia - but quite limited compared to the depth and breadth of Merrifield Garden Center or Meadows Farms in Northern Virginia. The nursery does, however, excel with traditional Virginia staples like boxwood, stocking multiple sizes as container or B&B (ball and burlap). Additionally, Rainfrost has large, mature specimen and shade trees for proper proportion in larger landscapes. Quality is top-shelf; everything looks lush and healthy despite the recent hot and dry summers.
The staff is generally adept at recommending plants to meet landscape requirements, although seek out the owner, Steve Wilkerson, for the best counsel. They also dispense good advice on deer-proof plants; but the three-year dry spell means that all bets are off (they tell me that deer are now eating plants they've avoided in the past). Their landscape design (DeDe is no longer with the nursery) has been competent and it's gratis so long as you buy the plants from the nursery. However, Rainfrost did not offer a comprehensive blueprint design plan like LandTech Group, even for a fee. Installation runs about 100 to 150 percent of the cost of the plant which is in-line with other nurseries. We're told that if Steve or the gentleman with the ZZ Top-style beard do the planting, the specimen will flat-out live because these guys are the best landscape installers in the area.
Inexplicably, however, Rainfrost does not guarantee their plants, not even if you have Rainfrost install them! The aforementioned Northern Virginia nurseries offer a one-year guarantee, even if you plant it yourself. So do Lowe's and Home Depot as well as other local nurseries. So it begs the question: why not Rainfrost?
Also, prices are steep. Perhaps a comparison to Meadows Farms (they have a location just north of Charlottesville) is unfair because the company can control prices since it owns a nursery growing operation and buys in volume from suppliers. Same with Lowe's and Home Depot. But for perspective, we used to refer to Merrifield as the Gucci nursery. That is, until we saw the prices at Rainfrost.
Still, Rainfrost is the best of the local nurseries. With deleveraging now the daily mantra for consumers, it's worth noting that prices are discounted in the fall on many plants that don't sell over the summer. And if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, you can save some additional money by installing the plants yourself. Then again, it's still free to just walk around and take in the beauty at this handsome and bucolic nursery. read more
