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The Nursery LedgerA guide to specialty plant nurseries and mail order growing

Parterre 03 · Ordering by Mail

Ordering plants by mail without surprises

What bare root trees and perennials look like on arrival, when nurseries ship, and what a plant guarantee really promises before you order.

Open cardboard box on a potting bench holding a dormant bare root perennial with moss around damp roots and a packing slip

Mail order is how most gardeners reach a specialty nursery, and it runs on a rhythm that surprises first-time buyers: orders placed months ahead, plants shipped dormant and bare-root, boxes that look alarmingly empty for what they cost. None of that is a scam; it is the trade working the way the season forces it to.

This parterre explains the machinery. What a bare-root plant should look like when the box opens, and what to do in its first hour. Why nurseries ship by zone and by weather rather than by impatience. And what the guarantee on the order form actually covers, read the way a grower would read it rather than the way a hopeful gardener wants to.

In this parterre

  1. Dormant bare root tree with moist fibrous roots and a pruned whip laid across an open cardboard box on a gravel path in late winter

    What bare root means when it arrives

    The first box of bare root plants alarms every new mail order gardener: no soil, no leaves, a bundle that looks like kindling. It is the healthiest way a plant can travel, and the first hour decides the season.

  2. Stack of open cardboard nursery boxes with packed dormant plants and printed zone shipping schedules on a packing room bench

    Nursery shipping seasons, explained

    You order in January and the box lands in April, and this is not the nursery forgetting you. Shipping seasons are the trade’s way of moving live plants only when they can survive the trip.

  3. Printed nursery order form and guarantee terms lying on a potting bench beside a recovering seedling in a small pot

    Plant guarantees: read the fine print first

    Every catalog promises satisfaction; the differences hide in the notice windows, the exclusions and the definition of dead. Read the guarantee before you order, because it is the contract.

Every guide in this parterre reads against the planting calendar by USDA zone, and two neighbouring parterres extend it: Find a Nursery and Plant Specialties.