By Sharon Parker
When I called this 99-year-old Wisconsin mail-order house to ask whether I should pronounce their name with a j as in jack or if it was more like the name of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (yung), they said, “Oh, either way.” Now you know you’re dealing with a Midwestern company--an East Coast nursery would surely never be so nonchalant about their name.

Jung is a true down-home operation (www.jungseed.com), with prices as modest as their attitude. They show a healthy skepticism about genetically modified organisms, saying, “We believe that more testing needs to be done,” and, “To our knowledge, none of our products have been developed through the mechanical transfer of genetic material between genera, families, or kingdoms.” They also do not sell seeds treated with fungicides or pesticides except where no alternative exists, and then they tell you.

This catalog is packed with a great variety of plants, along with excellent photographs. I have used them more for plants than for seeds--in truth, I don’t think I have ordered any seeds from them, having other catalogs I like to use for that purpose. But I have been quite pleased with the plants I have gotten from them and with their customer service.

A few years ago I wanted to plant a hedge along the sidewalk in my front yard. After doing a little research I settled on the cotoneaster shrub for its glossy small oval leaves, dainty pink blossoms, black berries that birds like to eat, and red fall color--as well as its tolerance for part shade or sun and a range of soil pH. I needed about a dozen of them to cover the stretch I wanted, and I didn’t have the budget to spend $20 each, which is the least you are likely to spend if you buy individual potted bushes. So I ordered the bare-root plants from Jung, 12 for about $30. They looked pretty scrawny when I planted them, but two years later they were as big as the $20 pot-size and beginning to fill in the space between the plants.

Other shrubs I ordered as single specimens, such as the old-fashioned bridal-wreath spirea (a dwarf variety), or the cheery yellow-blossomed forsythia, cost only $6.95 each and have also caught up in two years with the larger specimens that cost three times as much. We enjoyed raspberries last summer and fall from their preselected assortment of 11 plants, three different varieties, for just $23.95 total. The raspberries are well on their way to providing enough of a surplus for freezing and jam-making in just another year or so.

All of these plants were delivered quickly, arrived and remained healthy, and took to the soil with no difficulties or transplant shock. I recommend them especially for landscaping projects that could run into hundreds of dollars if you were to buy potted shrubs. For me, it was really faster in the end, because I would have had to buy only a few plants each season, and so in two or three years would still be aquiring plants, whereas in that time, these little saplings all have become as large as the potted specimens.