Many plants will be harder to find this year By Marcia Westcott Peck and Dennis Peck, oregonlive.com Published: February 6, 2021, 6:04am Share: 6 Photos Nancy Buley leads a tour of J. Frank Schmidt & Son wholesale nursery. (Photos by Marcia Westcott Peck for The Oregonian) Photo Gallery A number of plants will be harder to find this year, because there simply aren’t as many of them. As for why, you can blame the same thing responsible for mask-wearing and social distancing and rampant business closures and unemployment. Yes, the coronavirus pandemic. But not in the way you might think. The main reason for the shortages, according to Nancy Buley of J. Schmidt & Son, a wholesale grower of trees based in Boring, is that the pandemic kept people home, where they in turn noticed that their gardens could use a little — or much more than a little — sprucing up.