Beneluxge Vendors (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Germany)

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Europeans, usually not the kind of people to run bonsai stores. That's just fine, but it makes home delivery an issue. You need a car to visit nurseries with very limited opening times, usually they open on demand only. There are few walk-in stores we can visit.
I've been ordering plants from home, and it usually turns out pretty OK. I mean, you get what you pay for and there's always a risk factor involved when you can't see nursery material before you buy it.
There are a few more Europeans on this website, and I'd like to share some of my experiences with online nurseries / online garden centers.
Other Europeans are always free to chime in and add experiences of course! That's what this thread is about.

Since there's little bonsai-specific and more gardencenter-like stores, I'm fine with incorporating those as well.

Netherlands

Website: Bonsaishop.nl
Materials bought: Wire, Lime sulfur
Experience: Good info before hand, good status communication, a nice hand written "Thank you and good luck" note included.
Delivery time: Average, 2-3 days after order.
Shipping costs: Regular package shipping costs PostNL
Overall: Good.

Website: Tuinplantenwinkel.nl
Materials bought: Mugo Pines
Experience: Exceptionally good store, good communication, very good customer care; if there's anything wrong, they fix it directly. They hand pick and deliver by themselves, they go the extra mile for you. If you want your plants delivered to the top of your roof, they'll do it.
Delivery time: Within a week.
Shipping costs: 7.95 euros
Overall: Very good.

Website: Tuinplant.nl
Materials bought: Junipers
Experience: Pretty alright, lots of juvenile material, poor communication though, giant delivery window compared to others.
Delivery time: 2 weeks.
Shipping costs: 9.95 euros
Overall: Mediocre.

Website: Tuincentrum.nl
Materials bought: I ordered Japanese Quince, I received Fuchsia.
Experience: Bad experience, customer care doesn't exist, unwanted soliciting through third parties, upon questioning my order I received zero feedback. You get what they want you to get, not necessarily what you've ordered.
Delivery time: 3-4 weeks.
Shipping costs: 4.99 euros
Overall: Terrible experience.



Germany


Website: Pflanzmich.de
Materials bought: Junipers, Japanese black pines, Scots pines
Experience: Poor status communication, great quality trees for very low prices (example: 2-4 year old black pines for 6 euros), some information only available in German, accepts Paypal. Most extensive inventory when it comes to different species and sizes.
Delivery time (to NL): 2-3 weeks.
Shipping costs (to NL): 12.10 euros
Overall: Good.


Website: Bonsai.de
Materials bought: Pots.
Experience: Good status communication, good quality pots for reasonable prices, very well packaged. They stress you should check your package for damage directly when it's delivered.
Delivery time (to NL): 2-3 days.
Shipping costs: 8.90 euros
Overall: Good.

 

[Fonz]

Thanx for the list.

2 day ago I ordered a couple of young craetagus and acer campestre from Tuincentrum.nl

I hope my experience with them will be better than yours.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Thanx for the list.

2 day ago I ordered a couple of young craetagus and acer campestre from Tuincentrum.nl

I hope my experience with them will be better than yours.

I hope so too. They really didn't do any effort to respond my emails.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Another one to add from February this year

Website: Mypalmshop.nl
Materials bought: 2 Cedars (Deodora)
Experience: Rootless trees chopped from the dirt with a shovel and thrown in a pot. Full of grubs, damaged bark (literally no connection of cambium between roots and tree) and poorly done V-grafts. No survival even though I did my very best to have them make it. Seller response: Thanks for the effort, we're going to look into this because we don't check the trees we get from our supplier. If you want a discount, let us know!
Shipping costs: 6,75 euros
Delivery time: 2-3 weeks.
Overall: Never again.

 

[baron]

For online splurges and general stuff I usually make use of

http://www.bonsai.de
Materials bought: trees (usually within thin < €100 price range), pots, wire, soil, scissors...wel kinda everything
Experience: Always good . Think I've done about a dozen purchases so far and only once had a little issue with a gift certificate but was handled in no time.
Shipping costs: €11 or €13
Delivery time: 2-days depending on stock
Overall: very good

or

https://bonsaischule.de/
Materials bought: trees (usually within thin < €100 price range)
Experience: Done two or three purchases so far. The quality of the trees seems to be a little bit better then the other one. But they have less mallsai.
Shipping costs: €11 or €13
Delivery time: 2-days depending on stock
Overall: very good


https://bonsaicenterginkgo.wordpress.com/
As for actual nurseries and really good trees there is only one place I know in Belgium with decent opening hours and amazing tress.
I'm not really comfortable discussing prices tho... I've heard some say they find them high, some find them low....Imo it depends.
I also take classes there with the trees I've bought so far.The biggest problem is that I usually end up spending an entire day

They only other one I've been so far was Lodder. Lot of nice trees, some quite expensive, lot of mallsai... But I guess you would know that one

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Thanks for your addition Baron!

 

[petegreg]

There are few more good e-shops in your space of interest.
I have very good experiences with already mentioned http://www.bonsai.de/, https://bonsaischule.de/ and will add one more german site:
https://www.bonsai-shop.com/en/

All mentioned have a great selection of plants in various stages of development, you'll recieve what ordered (pictured) except some starters (young material - seedlings...).

I'll mention few good shops from Central Europe territory, all good people and services.

https://www.e-bonsai.com/home/?&force_sid=p9r15ol4tjl5s1gssnlr0s3l65&cur=1&&... BC Libčany, Czech republic

https://www.bonsaicentrumkosice.sk... BC Košice, Slovakia

http://www.e-bonsai.eu/e-bonsai/novinky-v-eshope... BC Nitra, Slovakia, our oldest one

http://www.bonequip.cz... great place to find all soil components, pots, yamadori, CZ

https://www.ibuki-shop.com... good source of copper wire, soils, I think I don't have to introduce this place, Poland

... and many more smaller shops and dealers...

 

[ajm55555]

I had a nice experience with this German online shop: bonsai-onlineshop.com.
I bought a JM Deshojo there, shipped with care and at a reasonable price and they have a picture of every plant.

 

[SuperMarioZZZ]

Kaizenbonsai.com - UK based

Bought some tools and materials, everything was great. The communication with them is very difficult over email at least. They are responding after weeks or they don’t respond at all.

They have good yamadori.

Bonsai.de - Germany

Bought over 1000 euro tools and everything was great, including the communication. I will buy again from them.

Animabonsai.com - Croatia

Awesome yamadori, recommended by important persons. I would buy from them.

 

[leatherback]

bonsai museum dusseldorf is a good walk-in store
Deshima bonsai is good walk-in and also sends things ( I think)

 

[Mapleminx]

www.meingartenshop.de often has a good supply of nursery stock Acers for a low price. I’ve even picked up a few on sale for under 10€. Customer service was great and all plants/trees come with a 1 year grow guarantee. If they die or arrive in not the best condition then a refund is issued swiftly once a photo is provided.

Like @Vlad Cruceanu I have also used Kaizenbonsai. In my experience they were quite fast at replying to email but not particularly informative. Shipping was very quick but rather expensive to mainland Europe.

 

[Mapleminx]

Website: Gartenhit24.de
Materials bought: Acer Palmatum Corallium
Experience: Order processed and handed over to courier within 48hours despite pandemic. Prices were a good chunk lower than other vendors.
Delivery time (to DE): Less than a week.
Shipping costs (to DE): 6,90euros
Overall: Excellent.