Your plants have spent a day or two in a dark box, and they will show it. Almost everything that looks wrong on arrival is thirst, and it sorts itself out within a couple of days.
Every order is picked, checked and packed by hand at our nursery, which is the part we can control. Here is what to do at your end, and how to tell the difference between a plant that has had a rough journey and one that has a genuine problem.
How your order reaches you
Picked
Chosen and quality-checked by our own team before it goes anywhere.
Packed
Boxed by hand, plant by plant, to hold the growth steady in transit.
Dispatched
Your order confirmation gives the expected dispatch date, including for pre-orders.
Delivered
Open the box the same day it arrives, even if you cannot plant for a fortnight.
Larger orders sometimes travel in more than one parcel, even when they share a delivery note. Your delivery note says whether anything is still to follow, so please allow 48 hours before telling us something is missing.
The first half hour
- Open the box today. Your plants have been in the dark with no air and no light. This matters more than planting them.
- Cut down the side of the box, not across the top. We pack tight so nothing moves about, which means a blade across the top can go straight through the foliage.
- Unwrap anything in leaf and stand it somewhere sheltered and bright. Dormant bare root is the exception, see below.
- Water potted plants until it runs out of the bottom. Most of what looks alarming on arrival is a dry rootball.
- Then leave them be for a few days. Hold off on repotting, pruning and feeding. A plant that has just travelled wants light and water.
What is normal after a journey
Normal, and it passes
- Limp or drooping leaves. Water it and give it a day or two.
- Yellow leaves at the very bottom. The oldest leaves go first on a plant that has been dry.
- A few loose leaves in the bottom of the box.
- Bent or squashed stems. They lift again once they see daylight.
- Dropped flower buds. Buds react to a change in temperature and humidity. The plant will set more.
- Pale, stretched growth. It firms up in better light, though the stretched bit stays stretched.
- Loose compost in the box. Top the pot back up and water it.
Tell us about this
- Stems that are mushy or slimy rather than simply limp.
- A sour or rotten smell from the compost.
- A broken rootball, or a plant loose in its pot with most of the compost gone.
- Anything snapped clean off.
- A bulb that has gone soft or is rotting at the base.
- No sign of recovery at all after 10 days of watering and daylight.
If you remember one thing: limp is normal, mushy is not.
It depends what you ordered
Pot grown plants
Most of what we send. Water on arrival until it drains from the base, then stand the pot outside somewhere sheltered.
There is no deadline. A container-grown plant can go in the ground at any time of year, so long as you keep it watered while it waits. Give it a good drink in the pot before you plant it, and the rootball slides out in one piece.
Young plants and plugs
Anything in a small pot has been raised under cover and has never met British weather. Put it straight into a border and the check to its growth can set it back for the season.
Harden it off first. The RHS suggests two to three weeks: outside during the day, back under cover at night, easing off gradually. It is the single commonest reason a perfectly healthy young plant fails.
Bare root
It will look dead. Brown, twiggy, no leaves at all. That is exactly what a dormant plant looks like, and it is why bare root is lifted and sent in winter.
The only thing that really kills bare root is the roots drying out. Planting within a few days? Leave it in its bag somewhere cold and frost free. Longer than that, heel it in: a shallow trench, roots covered over with soil, and it will sit happily for weeks. Soak the roots for about half an hour immediately before planting, and no longer.
Bulbs and corms
Firm is what you are looking for. We send bulbs at planting time, so the best thing you can do is get them in the ground.
If you cannot, keep them somewhere cool, dark and dry in a paper bag or a net. Never a plastic one, it traps moisture and they rot. A bulb that has softened or is rotting around the base will not come to anything, so put that one aside and let us know.
Is it dead? A ten second test
Scratch a small patch of bark with your thumbnail.
- Green underneath means alive. Whatever it looks like above ground.
- Brown and dry means that bit has gone. Work down the stem and scratch again until you find green.
- Brown all the way down? Try a root the same way. Dark and soft roots confirm it.
If you find green anywhere, be patient. The RHS advice is to wait until spring before writing a plant off, and a good number of the ones that look finished in the box come away perfectly well once they are in the ground.
If something is not right
Get in touch as soon as you can and we will put it right. It helps enormously if you can send us four things:
- A photo of the plant.
- A photo of the box and packaging as it arrived.
- Your order number.
- The date it turned up.
Photos taken on arrival save a great deal of back and forth later, because they show us the condition it reached you in. Every order is covered by our 30 day money-back guarantee: if your plants do not thrive, we will replace them or refund you.
Care guides for what you have bought
Every plant group has its own printable guide: bare root, flowering bulbs, containers, young plants, lavender, hydrangeas, clematis, rhododendrons and more. That is what the QR code on your packaging points at, and you can browse them all on our Gardening Guides page.
Delivery is £4.95 per order, and free on orders over £50. We are sorry that we cannot currently deliver to Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or overseas. The reasons are set out on our Delivery Information page.