Shipping & Returns
How orders ship, the live-arrival guarantee on living trees, returns on tools and supplies, and how to reach a real person about any order.
Shipping
Trees, tools and supplies ship direct from our nursery partners in the United States, carefully packed for live-plant transit, and ship within the U.S. only.
Printed merch, made to order by our print partner, ships to the U.S. and Canada. A cart with only merch in it can choose a Canadian province; merch to Canada ships at a flat rate per item, shown in your cart before you pay. If the cart also holds a tree or anything else from our nursery partners, the whole order ships within the U.S.
- Handling: most orders are prepared within 1 to 3 business days.
- Transit: typically 2 to 7 business days depending on your location; live trees are shipped to avoid weekends in transit where possible.
- Shipping cost is shown on every product and in your cart before you pay, no surprises at checkout.
- We do not offer free shipping. Every item, trees included, charges its own shipping, and the amount is shown on the product page and in your cart before you pay.
- Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands: our carrier charges an extra $15.00 to these destinations. We pass it on at cost, with nothing added. It appears as its own line in your cart as soon as you pick your state, before you reach the payment page.
- State restrictions: a few live trees can’t be shipped to certain states because of agricultural rules. If an item can’t go to your state, checkout will tell you before you pay, it’s never a surprise after the fact.
Living trees are not returnable
Living trees cannot be returned or exchanged once they have shipped. They are perishable goods: their condition depends entirely on care from the moment they leave the nursery, so we cannot resell a returned tree and cannot accept one back. This applies whether or not the tree has been unpacked, and it applies to change-of-mind, wrong-choice, duplicate and gift orders. Please read the species page and check your climate before you order, and email us first if you are unsure, we would much rather help you choose.
What you get instead is the live-arrival guarantee below, which covers the thing that actually goes wrong with mail-order plants: a tree that turns up damaged or unhealthy.
Live-arrival guarantee
Every living tree is guaranteed to arrive healthy. If your tree arrives damaged, unhealthy, or not as described, we will make it right with a replacement or a full refund including shipping. To claim it, all of the following must be true:
- You open the box the day it arrives and check the tree over. Do not leave a live plant boxed, a tree that sits sealed for days will decline, and that decline is not covered.
- You contact us within 48 hours of delivery (the carrier’s delivery timestamp is what counts), at [email protected], with your order number.
- You send clear photos of the tree and of the packaging as it arrived, including the box. Photos are how we make a claim with the nursery, so a claim without them cannot be processed.
- The tree is still as delivered. Do not repot, prune, wire, fertilise or treat it before contacting us.
Keep the box and packing material until the claim is settled. We may ask you to return the tree at our expense; if we do, we will send a prepaid label.
The guarantee does not cover:
- Claims made more than 48 hours after delivery.
- Trees left unopened in the box, or delivered to an address where nobody could receive them.
- Refused or undeliverable deliveries, and packages marked delivered that were left somewhere unsafe at your instruction.
- Decline after arrival caused by watering, light, temperature, repotting, pruning or pest problems, that is ordinary aftercare, and our problem diagnoser and care guides are there to help.
- Normal transit signs that do not affect the plant’s health, such as a little soil movement, some leaf litter in the box, or minor cosmetic marks on the pot.
- Seasonal leaf drop on deciduous species, which is normal and not a defect.
Returns on tools, pots, soil and supplies
Non-living items, tools, pots, soil and supplies, can be returned within 7 days of delivery if they are unused and in original, resalable condition and packaging. Contact us first for a return authorization; returns sent without one cannot be processed. Return shipping is the buyer’s responsibility unless the item was damaged, defective or wrong. We refund to your original payment method within 5 to 7 business days of receiving and inspecting the return.
Restocking charge: a 20% restocking charge is deducted from the refund when an item is returned because it was bought in error, for example the wrong item was ordered or you changed your mind. There is no restocking charge when the item arrived damaged, defective or wrong (see below).
Not returnable:
- Living trees, at any point after shipping (see above).
- Custom, special-order, or made-to-order items.
- Clearance / final-sale items and gift cards.
- Items that have been used, planted, or are not in resalable condition.
Printed merch: returns, refunds and exchanges
Our shirts, sweatshirts and other printed merch are made to order by our print partner, so they follow their own policy.
- Misprinted, damaged, defective or wrong items: email us at [email protected] within 30 days of delivery, with your order number and photos of the problem, and we’ll send a replacement or issue a refund. No need to send the item back unless we ask.
- Lost in transit: if your order hasn’t arrived, let us know within 30 days of its estimated delivery date and we’ll sort it out.
- No returns for change of mind: because every item is made to order, we don’t accept returns or refunds for items you no longer want.
- No size exchanges: please check the fit notes in the product description before you order, including when to order a size up.
- Wrong address or unclaimed parcels: if a parcel comes back to us because the shipping address was incomplete or it wasn’t collected, we’ll reship it once you confirm the address, and the reshipping cost is yours. Returned parcels not reclaimed within 30 days are donated to charity.
Damaged, defective, or wrong item
If a non-living item arrives damaged, defective, or is not what you ordered, that’s on us. Email us within 7 days of delivery with your order number and a couple of photos, and we’ll send a free replacement or a full refund, including any shipping. No need to send the item back unless we ask. For living trees, use the 48-hour live-arrival guarantee above instead; for printed merch, the 30-day merch terms above apply.
Payments & security
Payments are processed securely by Stripe. We never see or store your full card details. Your order confirmation and any shipping updates come by email.
Please reach out to us before requesting a return or opening a payment dispute , email us and we resolve almost everything within 2 business days, which is faster for you than a chargeback.
Talk to a person
Questions before you buy, or something wrong with an order? Email [email protected] or call 843.773.4086 and a real person will help. Our address and every other way to reach us are on the contact page. We’d rather you ask than guess.