Shipping & Handling

 Updated Jan 2010

• There are 3 Shipping & Handling rates  

• Lotus Seeds & Books ONLY $5.00 - select this shipping rate if your order contains Lotus Seeds and or Books and or soaps; nothing else.  

• Supplies $9.00 - fertilizer/bird houses/fish food/pots/nets (and Lotus Seeds and Books if ordered with supplies)  

• ALL Live Plants $15.00 and Lotus Seeds/Books and or Supplies if ordered along with plants  

• Plants are shipped starting in the spring (late April) depending on mother nature, the weather and type of plants and we stop shipping plants 1 October of the year.  

• Plant orders for California must be inspected by the North Carolina Agriculture Department to insure the plants are free of known pests (plants and or insects) before they can be shipped. Please allow about two weeks as I have to arrange for the inspector to come down for the inspection  

• Some planting baskets and or large containers of fertilizer may be subject to additonal shipping charges due to their size and or weight. You will be contacted with the exact shipping charges.  

• Plants are shipped Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday  

• If you ordered plants and supplies I try to ship both together unless there is risk that the supplies could hurt the plants, then they get ship separately.  

• If you select the wrong shipping option I will contact you.
  Your order will not ship until the shipping has been paid. 

• No CODs  

• Shipping and handling fees are not refundable.

• We do not ship outside the USA.

• We are not responsible for damage caused by the shipper 

• If you have a question or need additional assistance,

  please email

  or call us at (252) 728-5440

  If we are not in, please leave a message and we will get back with you as soon as we can.

  The best way to contact us is by email.   If you require that I apply to your  "preferred" or "friends" ect email list to send you an email then place me on the list.  

   

Contrary to popular belief, shipping is not free. You pay for the cost of shipping somewhere. I have a low profit margin on the products I sell and offer discounts on many of them if bought in quantity, so I can not afford to offer free shipping. I know of many large name nurseries that offer lower shipping rates (and some that charge more) and sell the same plants for almost twice what I sell them for. Also I do not have a "boxing fee" that many nurseries charge for packaging the order. The cost of shipping has to cover the cost of the shipping materials (boxes, bags, packing tape, peanuts, bubble wrap, shipping labels) the actual price the post office charges (they charge by a combination of weight, size of the box and where it is being shipped to, plus they have had two price increases in 2009 and  one in Jan 2010) and a little bit to cover the cost of taking the package to the post office. Shipping live plants is very labor intensive. I have to go out to the nursery and select the plants, clean then, inspect them for weeds, label them if there are several varities in the order, bag them and then box them. When I get a live plant order boxed up and ready to go, it stays in an air conditioned area until ready to go to the post office that same day. I try to take live plant orders to post office late in the afternoon so they do not sit around in a hot warehouse. Yes, I know that the Post Office will pick up my packages at my business, but I do not want any order containing live plants to sit in a hot truck making its rounds.