We ship via United States Postal Service Priority Mail. This means that your mail carrier will deliver the package, not the FedEx or UPS drivers. It also means that we can ship to a post office box, and delivery days include Saturdays.

You will be notified when your package ships, by the USPS, not by us. They will give you a tracking number, though it usually only tells you where and when the package was shipped, not where it is. Transit time is typically 2-3 days from when we ship. We time shipments so they don't sit in a post office over the weekend.

If you think you need a different shipping method, we will oblige, but the cost will be much higher than stated on your receipt, and we will charge your card twice, once for the plants, and again for shipping.

IMPORTANT CHANGE: USPS used to charge by weight and distance. They have now added volume, so that the size of the box partly determines shipping charges. Since our plants come in many sizes and may be ordered in any combination, it is no longer possible to determine shipping costs in advance in some circumstances.

If you live in postal zones 5-8 (everybody on the east coast and in the midwest and southwest, including Denver) your box may not exceed 1 cubic foot without incurring "dimensional" charges, which usually means around the 20-lb rate, even if the box only weighs 9 or 10 pounds. This means that shipping costs may increase dramatically if you have more than 8 plants or so. There is no way we know of to determine this in advance, so we have made our shopping cart charge at the 20 lb rate for orders of 8 or more plants to zones 5 and higher. We'll do what we can to keep costs down, such as bare-rooting plants that we think will do ok that way, potting down into smaller pots for shipping, and cramming more pots into a box that we would have before. If we can significantly reduce the cost to ship a package, we will, but your receipt will show the worst-case scenario.

Since we can't know the cost until we know both the weight and the size of the box, we may refund part of your shipping charge if the actual cost is significantly lower than what you were charged. We won't charge than it says on your receipt more unless you haven't selected the correct postal zone.

If you didn't understand all that, welcome to the club. If you did and can think of a better solution, we'd love to hear it.

Plant Size: The great majority of our plants are shipped in what are called 4" pots, but are actually a bit smaller. As to the size of the plant itself, this depends on the kind of plant, how fast it grows, when it was transplanted, etc. For Japanese maples, tree size is specified next to the 'Add' button. Click on the link that says, for example, Size #1, to see what that means.

We warrant that our plants are well-rooted and sufficiently mature to continue to grow if given reasonable care. Beyond that, we don't guarantee any particular size.

We always give you the largest/best specimen available at the time we fill your order. Requests like "please send me a nice big one" are ignored, because we always do the best we can in that regard.

Return Policy: We guarantee that the plants will arrive healthy and in a condition which will allow them to continue to grow. Try to inspect them before removing them from the box. This will make it much easier to return them, if necessary. If they do not arrive in satisfactory condition, or if they have problems within a few days of arrival, or if you aren't sure, email us within 14 days. Once they arrive in good condition, and lacking notification of a problem within two weeks, they are no longer our responsibility.

Depending on the situation, we may or may not ask you to return the plants as a condition of receiving a replacement or refund. If you can take picutres of their condition on arrival, it will help us make that decision. If we ask you to return them, we'll pay the postage, usually by returning the amount to your credit card.

Payment Methods: By default, payment is by Visa or Mastercard. We cannot accept any other cards.

If you want to pay by check or money order, just choose that method from the drop-down menu under Choose Payment Options. The shopping cart will generate a printable order that you can mail to us, along with your check or money order. Our address is on the printed form.

If you want to pay via PayPal, select that option from the drop-down menu under Choose Payment Options. You will be taken to your PayPal account, where you can send the total to groe@worldplants.com. The transaction isn't complete until you instruct your PayPal account to make the payment. You do not need to add extra shipping at PayPal.

If there is a problem with payment, such as a declined credit card or an insufficient PayPal payment caused by choosing the wrong shipping zone, we'll send you a message to that effect, with instructions on how to make the payment happen. However, we can't save plants for you while awaiting resolution of payment issues, since many customers abandon their orders in this situation, without notifying us.

Minimum Charge: We have no minimum order, but we do have a minimum shipping charge of $7.50. This means that if you order a single $4.00 plant, it's going to cost you $11.50 by the time you have it shipped. The main reason for this is that, for very small orders, the weight of the box can double the weight of the order.

From mid-March until mid-June, we don't have days off, non-working lunches, or days shorter than 12 hours. Despite working at a constant dead run, we have a lot of trouble keeping up. The reason is that 75% of our orders come during that period. As a result, it usually takes 2-3 weeks for orders to ship. If you email us during that time to ask when your order will ship, we'll tell you "2-3 weeks from the time we got it". Plus, the time it takes us to answer your email will be that much less time we have to ship orders. If there's a problem with your order, we'll let you know, you don't have to inquire. If you can't wait so long, order in the fall. Fall is a very good time to plant most things, many plants are larger, and it avoids the rush.

If your order does not arrive within 3 weeks, email us. If it's been lost or overlooked, we'll expedite it.

We can't predict shipping more than a day in advance, can't ship on specified dates (but we can hold them until after specified dates), and we process all orders on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of order size or your request to ship ASAP. We always ship ASAP, but sometimes ASAP is a long time.

Unless you specifically request it, WE DO NOT SUBSTITUTE. EVER. PERIOD. So, despite what your favorite gardening magazine tells you, it is not necessary for you to say "No substitutes". We think unrequested substitution is unethical, and we won't do it.

Still, popular items often sell out, so, if there are substitutes that are acceptable to you, please list them in the space provided near the end of the ordering process. If something isn't available, we won't contact you, so a substitution list may save you disappointment. If you don't want substitutions, you needn't say anything.

Privacy Policy: We don't share, sell, trade, or otherwise make available your address, email, credit info, buying statistics or anything else we know about you to anybody, anytime, period.

WE DO NOT SHIP INTERNATIONALLY. Like many other US nurseries, we've stopped doing this because it's become way too much trouble. If you live in Europe, use the RHS PlantFinder to locate your plants at British nureries that ship within the EU. If you're in Asia, Australia, or South America, you have enough plants already. Sorry, no exceptions. Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are part of the United States. Contrary to what some government officials believe, so is New Mexico.

Certain plants can't be shipped to certain states. For example, Citrus can't be shiped to Arizona, California, Florida, or Texas. Loncera spp. (Honeysuckles) can't be shipped to CT, MA, or VT. We choose not to ship Ampelopsis east of the Rockies.

We don't have a wholesale list, and seldom have anything in what we would consider wholesale quantities. We might be able to arrange wholesale purchases of some Japanese maples, if you want 20 or more of each variety. We don't give discounts on small quantities to other nurseries or plant shops.

We sell retail at the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon's spring and fall plant sales on the second weekends of April and September. The HPSO sale is held at the Expo Center at 2060 N Marine Drive in Portland. That's off Interstate 5 near Jantzen Beach and the Interstate Bridge over the Columbia. This is one of the better plant sales on the west coast, especially in the spring.

We also sell at the Clackamas Co. Spring Garden Fair at the Clackamas Co. Fairgrounds, Canby, OR. Check here for this year's dates.

Except on the above sale dates, we're at the Salem Farmers Market at the corner of Marion and Winter streets, Salem, Oregon, most every Saturday April-October. You might email to be sure.

Because we're at sales on weekends, our shipping and office work is not done at the growing site, we are away from the nursery grafting, cutting scion, and collecting plants a great deal of the time on a volatile, weather-contingent, unpredictable schedule, and because we don't have time to spare from keeping our mailorder customers happy, we are not able to have visitors at the nursery.

Special Order Button: Sometime a you may inquire about a plant we don't have listed. If we have it, we'll quote a price via email. Because it isn't in our catalog, you'll need a way to order it that also gives us your payment information securely, rather than in open email. This is what we call a Special Order. The Special Order button can also be used to give us new credit card information, if, for example, your card has been declined for any reason. Either way, you would only use this button if you've communicated with us first, so don't press the button just to see what it does. This will only confuse us.

Once we agree via email on a transaction, click on the button, wait until the page blinks, then click on the Shopping Cart icon. This will create a blank order with no items listed and no charges, allowing you to put in your address and other information. If you like, use the comment box near the end of the ordering process to remind us of the plant you wanted and the price we quoted. Or to remind us of the order # to which you're updating credit info.