Barton Springs Nursery

This became my go to nursery. I thought the employees were friendly, somewhat knowledgeable and I loved the nursery environment. Unfortunately I recently purchased two pots of identical mums each were a bit pricey at $ 16 a pot, but I figured I like the place and they look beautiful. Within a week and a half one of them completely died. They were both on the same stair on my front porch, received the same water, light and care. I phoned the nursery in hopes of getting another pot of mums to which they replied it isn’t their responsibility and it must have been my fault.
I’m very dissapointed and know several places that would take liability for a plant gone wrong. Customer service is a very important aspect to a business. I will be going elsewhere for my plants :-(

I’ve love this nursery. They have a large selection of native plants at great prices. I like being able to buy so many varieties in small 4 inch pots too. It makes trying a lot of new unfamiliar plants affordable. The staff is very knowledgeable too.

Nice selection, pretty space, and surprisingly affordable. Keep an eye out for the sale plants — among the cheapest you’ll find anywhere in town, but also great quality. I was as surprised as anyone about this, particularly given the luxury car show that is this nursery’s parking lot.
I’ll keep the Natural Gardener as my go-​to, but Barton Springs Nursery is a close second.

This is a great place to take your kids! We always pick up something to stick in the earth, and the shopping is so relaxing! We look at the birds, the fish, the plants. This nursery is more like an enchanted garden… Think Mayfield park, but you can take something home with you!

This nursery is as perfect as a nursery can be and I’ve been a customer since they were actually located on Barton Springs Rd. The only way they could be better would be to move closer to my home. Their selection is top notch, their associates knowledgable and helpful, and their grounds browse-​worthy. I’m a lifelong gardener and recently moved so I’m starting over with my gardens. I choose mostly drought tolerant and native plants and always find healthy, beautiful, and reasonably priced plants at Barton Springs. Be sure and check out the names on the back of the garden carts – always gives me a chuckle.

Great service! Lots of help selecting my items and very knowledgeable staff.
Will definitely make this my go to place for plants.

I want to work here when I retire! The staff are so knowledgeable and the selection of native plants is wonderful. This is not the big box type of nursery. These guys know their stuff and are a great source of information.

I love to wander around garden centers and dream of what my life would be like if I actually had a green thumb. and money.
If my backyard looked like this place I might actually go outside in the summer. I was really impressed with the selection and the quality of the plants. I got a mega-​huge plant (um…it was some kind of tropical thingy plant) bigger than me for $ 19 bucks. They had a great selection of banana, plantains and bamboo, I really expected them to be overpriced given their West Lake location but it turns out they are even lower than anywhere I’ve seen. When I kill this plant, I’ll be back for more.

This place is incredible. The best nursery in town hands down. The price, the selection, the sheer beauty of the place, and the friendly knowledgeable staff cannot be beat. Its easy to walk around for hours looking at everything and forget that you are in a nursery instead of some fantastic garden and everything you see is for sale.
I was about to buy a plant online that I didn’t think I would find locally. Sure enough I called everyplace in town nobody had it until I called here. I thought maybe they would only have a couple of varieties but I was assured they had many different colors and sizes.
Based on the prices I saw online I had a budget of $ 50. I thought I could get a decent plant with that. I was wrong. I got three AND only paid $ 40. Well i couldn’t just buy one plant after driving all the way across town could I? Next time I will be back with more money and more time. I wonder if they will let me picnic on the grounds? Well its just a thought.
4 $

Great products. Staff can always help. My daughter’s love the birds.

I go there often, as well as to other local nurseries. I’ve always gotten pretty good service, though it can get very busy on the weekend and you may have to wait your turn. I’ve also gotten very good information and advice. If you bought a mislabeled plant, let them know and give them a chance to make it right. Even the experts make a mistake now and again. And sometimes the growers mislabel plants, and the store staff doesn’t always have time to double check the labels, especially on a busy weekend when things are flying out the door.

I still like going to Barton Spring Nursery, but am rather irritated that they don’t accurately label all their plants. Every time I go there they have many unlabeled or inadequately labeled plants, and it turns out mislabeled plants. I’ve found 3 plants now that I planted from them are now old enough to be certain that they are not what they were labeled as… My Monterrey Oak is actually a Red Oak. The salvia I bought is not the variety I thought I bought from the labels at the nursery. My Spice bush is actually a common Bee Bush. Still Texas natives, but not the plants I had planned to purchase. I actually love the Bee bush and am glad I have it and the salvia. I’m okay with the red oak, but wanted something more oak wilt resistant and because I didn’t realize what it was until now I have not been as careful with it as I would have been if I known it was a red oak. The prices are still good, but buyer beware unless you are a really experienced identifier of plants you may end up with unintended plants in your garden.

Some businesses have a few good people, but it is rare to have a business where EVERYBODY is helpful, and some are even extraordinary. Barton Spings Nursery is such a place. Dave is the king as far as I am concerned. He knew everything about the plants we were getting. Everybody else was great too, and if someone didn’t know the answer… they actually ASKED someone over the walkie talkie to get the right info. Don’t have it, they can get it, usually off their own grow farms.
We were in dire need for serious help last winter when we bought a foreclosure where all the gardens had died the previous HOT summer (you remember 2011?!?, 100 days, 100 degrees+). By the time we closed on the purchase it was just death everywhere in the gardens. Only the liveoaks had survived.
We needed everything, and I think we got all of our plants here, from Sago Palms, to Washingtonian Palms, to Banana Trees to roses. Figs, lime trees. The list goes on. I don’t think we lost a single item bought from BSN. The dirt and other fertilizers that we got here are all organic and they acutally work.
Dave was also helpful in how to do things. They helped me figure out the drip system which has cut our garden water usage by over 80% (vs. sprinklers, plus the plants are doing even better).
Anyway, you get the idea. Go here, be happy. I put up a few photos. I live in a green paradise and I have Barton Springs Nursery to thank!

This nursery does two of my favorite things well: vines and roses. I’m always really impressed by the variety of vines they stock and an entire row is dedicated to antique roses.
It seems like this nursery is run by someone with the overall landscape design in mind as they have really nice trellises, bird baths, hanging lanterns and other decorative items that compliment the flowers of a garden.
The large oak trees hanging over the lot as well as the pergolas that have been put up make browsing in the summer time pretty bearable.
The aviary in the back is a nice touch too, full of what I think are Lovebirds but I could be wrong.
I’m definitely planning a return trip to pick out a trellis and a hanging lantern or two.

I love this place, and would be better off financially if I hadn’t found it! ha But, I keep coming back, and always find something cool, something on sale, something I shouldn’t be buying, but I do it anyway! That’s the case the other day, when hidden back behind some Canary Island Date palms, was a 30 gallon California Fan palm, which had been $ 179, on sale for $ 89. seriously, I didn’t know we have a layer of limestone about a foot and a half down, but I found out. and, after borrowing my neighbor’s pick axe, got that palm in the ground!
I’ve got some big Cal Fan palms from Barton Springs Nursery, and a really nice Pindo palm, too. other things I’ve bought there, tons of Vincas, (99 cents!!) Gold Star Esparanza, several Blu Glow agaves, hibiscus of all different colors and sizes, including a Lord Baltimore, which is perennial and amazing, by the way, and some other things I can’t remember.
The thing I always find there, is friendly and smart service. I love good service, and this is one of my five star service places! Also, out on their ‘farm’, which is a really cool place to go if you’re looking for a larger palm, yucca (we got a really nice Spanish Dagger out there), there’s a fella named Loreto, who will do the delivery and install on weekends, and he is «The Man»! He did such a great job for us, we’re getting ready to have him back out, to remove some cedar trees, and finish up a desert scape, on our second lot.
Yesterday, I told the lady, «Please, don’t let me buy another palm, no matter how hard I beg and plead», she laughed, but I’m serious. they have some nice Mexican Blue palms, which I’ve never seen anywhere else in town, that I’d just love to have in a big container until it’s ready to go in the ground, but. I’ve run out of ground!
Love this place, love the variety and selection, love the people, love the service. Anybody asks me my opinion, I’ll give ‘em the name, location, and number of this place instantly!

Barton Springs Nursery is the best nursery in the Austin area, and I know what I’m talking about. I am trained as a landscape architect right here at UT-Austin’s school of architecture. In my professional practice with Ecotopes (
), I shop for native plants almost exclusively at Barton Springs Nursery. You hire me at Ecotopes, you are also hiring these guys who support my business with high quality, high diversity native plants of the Edwards Plateau.

I came here looking for some plants for a terrarium. I wasn’t sure what plants would be good, and one of their employees made some suggestions that were helpful, but also mentioned that their focus was more on native plants and landscaping. They have a small selection of succulents that I ended up buying, and the plants have been great. If I had a yard I would definitely come here to get some native plants and maybe herbs for a garden.

My favorite nursery in town by far. They propagate a lot of their own plants, and in my experience they do really tend to survive better than the plants I buy elsewhere. Fantastic, huge grounds – you can wander for a couple of hours just looking at the plants, which are well-​organized in a grid – you know where to go to find what you’re looking for, which is not always the case – some other nurseries in town seem to always want to reorganize things every season. Massive rose selection, tons of shade plants, which can be hard to find at other nurseries, super-​cool trees (they ordered a forest pansy redbud for me – totally easy and nice) and a great selection of pots.
The staff are all really nice and passionate about what they do. And the carts all have hilarious names – be sure to check them out when you go for the first time.

This place is unbelievable! I said I wasn’t going to buy flowers in TexAss anymore… and I did. I am going to stick with these guys and their for Texas plants. I am always amazed at their pricing. I asked the guy at checkout how they stayed in business and he said that they grow all of their own plants. Unheard of! Nice!
All of my plants have been exceptional and grow like godzilla. I bought a gallon bamboo that need to be put in a five gallon container today for $ 4.99. 20 big ones at The Great Outdoors. Granted, I love me the Great… but they can’t beat these prices for quality goods. I also brought a plant in that I purchased from them to see what it was. Everyone telling me it was a berry and I said it was spinach. Sure enough spinach on a vine. I bought two more. They are tremendous and grow like crazy!
No more Home Depot or Lowes for me.
This place or Plantscapes… always.

Update: I continue to be a raving fan. I actually did a budget on just how much I spend here each month, and its not good-​lol
But in defense of buying really cool plants, at great prices, I know that they enhance the beauty of my home and add to it’s value. The staff here is super knowledgeable about everything they sell, AND anything else you might have growing in your garden. It’s the kind of service you get when staff are doing their passion for their daily living. There are some amazing specimens in the succulent area, and they do a great job of carrying really good quality glazed ceramic pots.
Original post: What can a 5 year regular say about her favorite place in Austin?
All the staff know impossibly large amounts of information about any plant you could ever think about growing here in Austin.
Everything is labeled and healthy looking.
Don’t miss a chance to talk with the manager Dave, one of the funniest and most well spoken garden guys I’ve ever met.
The large aviary filled with very happy budgie birds is sure to entertain the little ones.
The sales tables sometimes have plants that other places charge much more for. The succulents section is decent. Inquire as to when their Arizona and California desert plant shipments are due to come in and and make sure to be there the day the plants arrive, cause everyone buys all the cool stuff.
The best nursery I’ve seen in Austin, bar none.