Shipping live plants safely in cold weather

Shipping tropical aroids during cold weather is a solvable problem, but only if you take it seriously.

Cold is the real risk, not the journey

Aroids tolerate a few days in a dark box far better than most people expect. What they do not tolerate is a couple of hours below freezing. Cold damage shows up as translucent, water-soaked patches that go brown and mushy a day or two later — and by the time you can see it, it has already happened.

That is why the forecast matters more than the calendar. A mild January week is safer than a sudden cold snap in October.

What goes in the box

• A braced pot. The root ball is kept moist and the pot is wrapped and wedged so the substrate cannot shift and abrade the roots in transit.
• Supported leaves. Soft paper between and under the leaves, and a stake for anything tall enough to whip about.
• An insulated liner when the route is cold, which slows heat loss through the carton wall.
• A heat pack positioned so it warms the air in the box rather than touching foliage or roots. It is included free — we do not charge for it, and we do not skip it to save a dollar.

The carton is marked as live plants so it is kept the right way up.

When we hold an order

If temperatures along the route are severe — broadly, sustained sub-freezing conditions, or above 95 °F at the other end of the year — we hold the parcel and email you rather than send a plant into a frozen depot over a weekend.

A hold usually costs a few days. It is almost always cheaper than a replacement, and much cheaper for the plant. If you would rather we shipped anyway, we will, but plants sent against a weather hold travel at your risk and fall outside the guarantee.

Why we avoid Thursday and Friday dispatch in winter

A parcel that misses its delivery window on a Friday sits in an unheated sorting facility until Monday. In July that is survivable. In January it is not. So in cold months we hold back late-week orders and send them at the start of the following week, which is often the difference between a plant that arrives and one that does not.

Your side of it

• Be home if you can, or have the parcel held for collection rather than left outside.
• Bring the box in and open it the same day — a plant left overnight on a cold porch can be lost after a perfect journey.
• Do not put a chilled plant straight into a warm, sunny window. Bright indirect light and room temperature, and let it recover for a few days.

If it goes wrong anyway

Photograph the plant in the opened box before unpacking any further, then email us the same day with your order number. Keep the packaging until the claim is settled — it tells us, and the carrier, what happened. Every plant is covered for 30 days from delivery under our plant guarantee, and cold damage in transit is exactly what that is for.