I prefer to offer positive reviews, but my experience with Riverbend Nurseries has not been a good one. We recently moved to the area from Indiana, where my wife was a master gardener and our gardens were selected for the show garden tour of the city. We recently purchased several hundred dollars of plants from Riverbend Nurseries to start our new gardens here in Franklin, TN, and all but one of the plants have done well. One plant, a guara lindheimeri, was not doing well about a week after we purchased it, and it died. This was puzzling since we have grown guara successfully over the years.
Riverbend will not replace recently purchased plants that die. This is their policy (which is their right, although I think it shortsighted), but they should make that clear somewhere. We have always used private nurseries in the past to support their work. I have never had one refuse to replace a plant that dies quickly like this guara (fortunately we have not had many new plants die over the years, and my wife is exceptional in nurturing plants successfully).
If the replacement policy was the only issue, I would probably return to Riverbend. However, two other issues have occurred. First, when the plant showed problems I contacted Riverbend using their website contact link. I never heard back from them. Also, I have not found most of the people there in retail sale to be particularly knowledgeable. For example, today when we stopped by Riverbend to inquire about replacing the gaura, I also asked whether they carried pentas. The response was "what is a penta?". The previous visit I had asked about another common flower and got the same clueless response from a different employee.
I hope this information is useful to Riverbend. I would like to see private nurseries be successful, but customer service with knowledgeable employees has to be foremost in the business.