Short answere - NO! For quality and reasonable price go to a local nursery; not a major garden centre eg Dobies, B&Q etc.

If you are looking for shrubs and trees, then I recommend Buckingham Nurseries. Their plants are reasonable and very well packaged for transportation. Regards

You can get reasonably priced and good quality, but you then pay for postage and packaging. Amultree, Crugfarm etc come to mind.

Most of the large online plant suppliers (T&M, J Parkers, Van Meulen, Spaldings etc) sell small plants as they are cheap to grow and post.

Crocus is perhaps the best, good plant quality and variety, postage is between £3-5. They tend to be quite established plants.

A visit to a local nursery/garden centre is best. You can chose the best specimen and not pay for P&P. They also tend to be much larger and well established.

I buy my plug plants from Jersey Plants and have so far been very pleased with them.

Steer clear of 'DIY/Garden Centres.
Google - 'Nurseries' for your area.
Explore.

The biggest problem with 'online shopping' is the postal costs. A BIG order is worthy of the shipping, whereas buying a few plug plants is not worth the effort. There are exceptions with offers and discounts, but overall it is far better to visit the local, smaller, independent nursery and enjoy the 'local knowledge'.

Swings and roundabouts.

If you want common stuff then PLEASE seek out a local independent nursery. Most of the fare will be fairly run of the mill in terms of choice, although if they do use wholesale nurseries to supplement their stock it will most likely not be seen in the larger garden centres. Also, this is THEIR livelihood, so plants ARE better cared for.

As far as online goes I will vouch for;
Crug Farm
Hill House Nursery
Burncoose

I have used these and always been happy.

One that has been recommended to me that I've NOT used personally is Other Fellow Fuchsia - good range of Fuchsia (and Salvia). Small plants but small prices.

A local (to me) indy nursery is Good Value Plant Nursery. I bought a plant that was actually reserved for their fleabay store and it was very good, so I would guess that the plants sold through their website would be similar.

to add to the list: hayloft, longacre, plantagogo and cotswold cottage garden are 4 i have used successfully.

I'll add Beeches Nursery in Essex - very good prices and they have an enormous catalogue! They sell plants that I can't get at my local Nurseries/GCs.

How could I have forgot Cotswold Garden Flowers (google CGF)? Never used them for mail order, but visit them a couple of times a year and good plants that on the whole are not too common (or even some that are rare).

Cotswold Hardy Flowers must have improved over the last 2 years then. We went and bought nothing, the plants were is such poor weed infested condition.
Go look if you can, even big G/C's often have decent reasonably priced plants and small local Nurseries need all the support they can get.
Cannot help with online stuff, never bought anything other than a few bulbs from very specialist growers.

They is some good sellers on eBay have a look at the feed back that others are leaving and not only that if they send rubbish you can get your money back through paypal.The best I have had from eBay is from Jane Lane Nursery they have been brilliant.

Bedding plug plants seem to be ok as they are going to be pretty much standand wherever to purchase them. If you are going to buy herbacious or shrubs then I'm with Bulbaholic, buy from a good local nursery. If you can't see them, then don't buy them. Further to an earlier question, most of the small perennials are infact 'liners', which are grown by specialist growers and sold to nurseries and grown on to sell to the public. These are the periennial plants that are mostly advertised so you would need to grow them on before planting.

The only on-line buying Bulba and I do is from Glendoick Nursery for rhododendrons as I trust them to send good quality shrubs and know if there is a problem they will replace. For everything else it is local nurseries and the plant stalls at the Scottish Rock Garden Club Shows. Sadly the specialists nurseries in Scotland are going the way of the dodo as their owners grow ever older - like all of us! As the character Maggie Smith played in 'Quartet' stated 'old age isn't for wimps!'

I totally agree with Seaburngirl, I have found Hayloft very good and the only time a few of their plug plants of penstemon failed they had no hesitation in apologising and replacing them for free

I tend to buy a fair bit on ebay.

I recently purchased 3 x 2ft Forsythia, a 3ft Japanese Larch, a 5ft Acer Crimson King and a 5 ft Prunus Snow goose for fifty pounds inc postage.

You can't see them beforehand, but a lot of nurseries and independent growers are on there so you get a good quality product and a bit more variety than traditional retail outlets.

I buy a lot of seed of there too - I recently got some lotus flower seed from China and already have sprouts from one of them.