Shipping Charges
Before I got into the business, I thought nurseries got rich on shipping. We have no desire to rip off our customers or even make any money on shipping, but shipping is expensive. We also would like to avoid making the whole thing overly complex. We will continue to have no minimum order but shipping will be proportionally higher on small orders. Please note this is a shipping and handling amount and covers the cost of boxes packing materials and the labor involved in packing the order, as well as postage costs. We send virtually everything either UPS or Priority Mail. We pack plants carefully so even if they are delayed in transit they virtually always arrive in good condition. We ship Mon. - Wed. so plants are unlikely to be held over a weekend. If it should happen, don't panic! Even two weeks in transit is seldom fatal.Claims
We are happy to replace plants that were damaged in shipment or in the unlikely event that they were packed to wet and rotted. We check this very carefully; three different people look at the plants before we ship them. Once when we pull the order, once when the plants are prepared for boxing and once just before we actually put them in the box. Out of the vast volume of orders we ship every year, we average only a few claims. Of these the majority consists of plants that the customer thought were dead but in reality were just dormant. When plants are placed an a box they will often become a bit chlorotic or start to go dormant, dormant plants may start to wake up and send up some very white shoots, this is normal, the plants should green up when they get back in the light. When we get plants shipped to us, we unpack them immediately, repot them if needed, place them in a partly shaded place and water them in. Any yellow leaves are picked off and if there is any fungus from being in a box, we spray them with a broad-spectrum fungicide. We also understand that some plants resent shipping more than others, and will often sulk for a while until they settle in. These are often the most rare and choice plants, it is tempting at times to remove plants from the catalog because they resent being shipped but with a little care especially in terms of watering they usually do ok (it is very easy to overwater new plants). We want satisfied customers, in the rare occasion that something goes seriously wrong we need to know immediately so we can take steps to see that it never happens again. We therefore require all claims be made within two days of the arrival of the plants. If you feel the entire order is bad then we need to see it to determine what went wrong and will in most cases ask you return it to us immediately for a refund or reship. Other problems will be handled on a case-by-case basis; usually there is just a single plant in an order that may be of concern. In most cases we reship or send a refund automatically for this sort of thing but depending on what plant was involved we may want to see it to determine if it was actually dead or how it was mis-packed. If something happens and you cannot accept the order, please send it back to us immediately. For us the problem is more difficult than for many nurseries because we offer a number of plants that are very challenging to grow, even for experienced growers. It is inevitable that some of these will die. The deal is, we send them to you alive and well, after that its up to you. Probably the best thing you can do is to propagate new plants as soon as possible, then if you loose the original plant you have a backup (we do this with all new plants). We are happy to provide cultural advice, which may or may not be useful; so much depends on individual site conditions. We will not replace plants that have died months later or plants that the customer left sitting in the sun for a week before he got around to planting them. We do our best to quickly refund or reship damaged orders, occasionally re-ships have to wait until fall. Please be patient, spring is crazy and there are just not enough hours in the day. If you have further questions, call us at 1-517-223-3581, or send us an email.