Sourcing Strategy

My yard needed two additional Redtip Photinia in the standard (tree) form. Of course nothing else would work it was this plant or nothing. I called and visited the best nursery's in the area hoping to find them with no luck. I purchased two of these in 2006 and hesitated but ultimately didn't buy any in 2008 and now you can't buy them. Nursery's only sell the shrub version due to some fungus the plant is very susceptible to. Well...I'm not one to let that stop me. I hit the Internet - I'll find someone who will ship them to me! Unfortunately that didn't work either. I found myself randomly spotting MY TREES in other peoples yards. I would comment on their height and bushi-ness and then make plans to dig them up by moonlight. Instead of going to jail I found a better option. A church happen to have about 20 of these planted on the eastern property line. The plants looked to be very unhappy in this very windy location and I knew they would be very happy to relocate to my yard. So I decided to turn to the black market of horticulture. I email the church office and offered money to take their plants - and they accepted! I was totally shocked. It took about 90 days to finalize the contract , but ultimately I got 3 humongous Redtip Photinias and they are now in my yard. I'm now able to remove the green awning from the kitchen window and have an instance privacy hedge. LOVE IT! So now where there was 2, now we have 5.