Armstrong Garden Centers

I love shopping here. I came here with one of my clients doing a yard and garden makeover and we purchased a gorgeous variety of plants! I will attach pics of some of her new garden. She loves it. I also found a massive Valley Oak here! Valley Oak, aka Quercus Lobata, is my favorite native California tree. It has the most diminutive, lovely little Oak leaves, but it provides the nicest shade. It grows quickly and is amazingly drought tolerant because it’s a CA native, so it’s meant to grow in our climate. I searched for a good sized specimen all last year, and was only able to find very small saplings at Theodore Payne. And I bought one, it’s 12 inches high and very cute. Then one day I stop here to browse plants, and they had a giant boxed one, about 16 feet tall! With Shade and everything! for around 400 bucks. I know, that’s still a big chunk of change, I’m a working stiff. But when I stood in it’s shade trying to decide if I should buy it or not, I quickly knew it had to come to my house. Yay, I now have my favorite California native Oak tree in my landscape, so that means I can never move. Ha ha!

Have been buying our Christmas tree here for the last 2 years & always satisfied by their staff handling & securing the tree on top of our car.

This place is lovely! They have a huge selection of plants and all of them look healthy and thriving. I have two orchids that were gifts and had no idea what to do with them. I showed the pictures on my phone to the lady and was literally like, «Um, help?» She was super patient with answering all my questions (I had a lot) and helping me get the food I needed for them. I plan on going back soon to peruse more of their plants for my flower boxes this fall.

I always get what I came for thanks to the helpful and knowledgeable staff. The location is great (a stone’s throw from Home Depot) and you can’t help but wander around looking at all the awesome stuffs. Lately I’ve been coming in for pests and have been happy with the solutions there. I will be back!

I used to love this place because I thought it was a small family owned nursery struggling to get by. Turns out there’re a bunch of them. Oh well, it’s still the bomb, and I keep coming back. They have everything you need for your home gardening. If you don’t garden, that’s not a problem. Ask their friendly staff to hook you up with some suggestions. It’s seriously not as hard as you’d think, and it’s fun growing your own vegetables and stuff.

Tried twice to make Armstrong our garden shop. We recently moved to the area and have a lot of purchases for the yard to make. The first time, no one approached or acknowledged us. Wanting to give them a second chance, we went back and someone attempted to help us and said he’d «be right back». We stood in the same spot as he took out the trash and moved inventory around and around. No one else came to help.
Disappointed how invisible this business made potentially new and loyal customer feel.

Service is slow. They’re a bunch of people working but everyone is really wandering around doing their own thing. Waited 10 minutes before someone even said hello, but not before I said hello first.
Prices are very expensive.

You know, there are plenty of Home Improvement «like» mega stores that have garden sections — but if you have a serious «green thumb» and need the best selection of equipment, soil, seeds, etc… then this place is for you. I am not a crazy amped up garden person — but I can rarely walk our of here without a few beautiful plants or a garden «hoe» or two… It is worth a trip.

I don’t know anything about gardening.
My son is learning all about plants and the life cycle of a seed and wanted to grow something at home, so I headed out to the garden center to pick up some stuff. What I got from the very helpful cashier was a whole bunch of information about how to grow the things I got.
You don’t get that kind of help from the hardware stores.
So yeah. I’m a fan.

The customer service is horrible. No one there is helpful and Casey, the store manager is exceptionally rude.
I made the mistake of using them to do some landscaping in my yard. The person did not listen to what I wanted, and the day they came to plant they left the plants they dug up sitting in a pile in my yard. When I called to complain they explained that I could «take care of it myself.»
I do not recommend them and would never use them again.

I went here for the first time today. I was in need a a new pot for my aloe plant because it had way overgrown its starter pot.
When I walked in a female employee kindly smiled at me. I did wander around for awhile without anyone asking me if I needed help and when I finally did need help I had to seek it out myself. The gentleman, I wish I had gotten his name, who helped me was very friendly and knowledgeable. I was trying to find a nice ceramic pot that my aloe could live in permanently or at least for a very long time. He helped me select a pot and I formed me that I will work for a long time of jot permanently. Because its my first succulent I asked if I needed special soil and he helped me get the right soil as well. He even offered to replant my aloe, that I already owned and didn’t purchase from them, when I expressed a concern if the amount of soul in the bag would be enough. After getting pulled away for a bit, it seemed like they were a little short staffed, he reported the aloe for me!
My first experience here was great! The people I encountered were super friendly and knowledgeable and for the hand painted pot I chose I feel they are quite decently priced. I will be back for sure. Especially since the plant selection I saw looked very nice.

There comes a time in a man’s life when he starts to care about flowers, plants, and other greenery. That time comes when he owns a house and needs it to look nice. (With increasing pressure from his beautiful bride)
Enter Armstrong Garden Centers.
Armstrong is certainly one of the better chains that sells all your gardening needs. This location in Glendale is the nearest location to my home and I’ve come here enough times that the staff and I recognize each other though not enough to admit it to each other. I’ve bought a lot of plant life here and am happy to report that with the guidance of the staff, everything around my property is alive and quite a bit of it is thriving! These people know their plants and talked us into and out of different plant life and we’re thankful for it! We get all sorts of compliments from others about them as well.
They also sell a really great plant food. Can’t remember the name but it takes them 15 seconds to recommend it. They also have an indoor plant selection and fruit trees galore! Bought two apple trees that looked like sticks when I planted them and several weeks later have all sorts of leaves budding.
Home Depot has a great selection and can sometimes be cheaper, but their garden folk don’t know plants as well as Armstrong. I’ve had a few failed attemps with Home Depot which hurt my gardening pride, however, Armstrong has made it all better!

Armstrong is a mixed bag and seems so close to greatness yet falls short with overpriced plants, especially when there’s a Home Depot 5 minutes down the road with fruit trees that are ½ to ¹⁄₃^th the price. Come on, a five gallon fruit tree that can’t be much older than 2 years shouldn’t cost over $ 50. At Home Depot, you can get the same trees for $ 24.
Many of Armstrong’s trees are from Dave Wilson Nursery or Durlings. Dave Wilson makes some incredible patented trees with low chill hours. Yet, this Armstrong is stocking varieties that need 500+ chill hours. Glendale gets, at most, 300 chill hours. So they’re selling fruit trees that’ll never produce. Boggles the mind when Dave Wilson carries dozens of apples, peaches, plums, etc. that work in our zone.
Additionally, at $ 35 for a lamb hass avocado grown by Durlings, they’re $ 10 more than Home Depot and $ 5 more than other local garden centers… and that’s for the smallest avocado I’ve ever seen, had to be about 2 feet tall. I picked up one at Sunset Nursery that was a good six feet not including the pot for $ 30, also from Durlings. Why the tiny trees? I understand you get what the growers provide, but price accordingly — a 2ft tree shouldn’t be more expensive than a 6 footer.
That said, they display their trees beautifully with nice little tags, much better than the free-​for-​all that is Home Depot’s tree corner.
They do have one surprisingly good bargain — perlite. $ 20 for a 3 cubic foot bag. It’s $ 15 for a 2cuft bag at Home Depot. Same brand and everything, go figure. Decent seed selection but nothing compared to other nurseries.
The employees are knowledgeable and friendly and their other plants — veggies, succulents, etc. — look really great. They water and fertilize the plants so you’re definitely getting top notch stuff, which isn’t always guaranteed at the depot.
Armstrong, get reasonable with your prices and you’ll have yourself a convert. Otherwise, I can’t think of why I’d make Armstrong my first choice when there’s better/​cheaper options elsewhere.

Happy Aloe!
The plants here are always beautiful and healthy. Parking, no problem! This is a nursery that you can spend a lot of time just wandering around and taking in the variety of gorgeous, seasonal plants, succulents, pots, and unique garden decorations. If you need anything or want expert advice for your garden or want to buy a nice houseplant this is the place to go! Great selection, and even more important, so helpful! I’ve never had service like I had here. Oh, and Casey, the guy that helped me is hot!

Really super helpful to novices. I didn’t know what I was doing and they couldn’t help me enough. I’ll definitely return to do more business.

I like it when they have good sales and some of the employees are very helpful. I love their ceramic mushrooms. Their rewards program is supposed to reward loyalty, but you have to spend a lot to get anything back. And considering the cost of their regular priced items, such as compost… if you have time, you’ll save more money at Home Depot.
I like their heirloom tomato offerings, but I wish they’d have more plants/​seedlings that are hard to get, and often found at Sunset Nursery, or San Gabriel Nursery. Asian vegetables, Armenian vegetables, unique varieties, more heirlooms, and so on.

The only redeeming thing about this place is that they have Xmas trees, which makes it smell wonderful.
I made my way over there recently to find some plants for a terrarium that I’m building (in an old apothecary candy jar I had just purchased from downtown). Prior to going, I looked up some information regarding what kinds of plants I should use, especially considering that it would be in a closed jar. I had a list of plants that I was looking for, but I had no idea that they would be so difficult to find! When I got to Armstrong, I wandered around their various flowers and plants, all of which looked very healthy, but I couldn’t find any of the plants I was interested in purchasing. Since I thought it was probably normal bc nurseries are always limited to what they get from the gardeners, I deciced to ask one of the employees for some help.
When I asked about building my terrariums, the guy said to use succulents. However, I responded by saying I didn’t want succulents because the various articles I read said that they would only survive for about a month, especially inside an enclosed container. I asked him if there were more «normal plant-​like» options, to which he scoffed and told me that they wouldn’t last very long because «plants need oxygen to live.» While yes, that may be true, I’m seeing closed terrariums everywhere on blogs that state they seem to be doing fine… so no need to be snippy. To make matters worse, he gave me this ridiculously condescending look and added, «but if you really want, you can go inside to where the houseplants are.»
I’m sorry, but what’s with the attitude? Take a look at the Better Homes and Garden article that lists the top plants for terrariums: none of them are succulents. I don’t mind that this man may not have been educated on these or aware of this information, but there’s definitely a better way of providing good customer service. Even though it’s pretty and nice smelling, I will never be back. #rude

We’ve been coming to this place for many years. Within the past 5 years or so each time we come I leave my head scratching it saying «why do I keep coming back?»
With the exception of 2 very helpful employees (wish I could remember their names)
the rest of the staff is crabby and seems to resent having to help you.

Happy Plants
Small Armstrongs has happy plants and people. Though you can find better deals, their prices are reasonable and the quality is always great.

After reading mixed reviews, We thought Armstrong would be worth a try — its relatively close and there’s a Home Depot down the road just in case. We parked on the street, not realizing they had their own lot, and found a very nice, well stocked, nursery. Staff were walking about, talking with and helping people. After looking for things ourselves, it was time to ask for help and the chap I spoke to was very helpful AND friendly (and didn’t try and up or over sell me). As we were driving away I realized I’d forgotten to buy the «thumbs up» gopher I’d wanted. We’ll have to go back for that, but we would anyway. Nice little place!