Shipping Policy

This policy explains how we prepare, dispatch and deliver your order. It should be read together with our Return and Refund Policy and our Terms and Explanations. Where those documents give more detail on a point, they apply.

1. Where We Ship

We ship within Canada only. We are not able to export plants to other countries at this time.

Deliveries to remote and northern postal codes routinely take considerably longer than the estimate shown at checkout. For these addresses we may ask you to use the fastest service available, or suggest waiting for a milder season.

2. Your Delivery Address

You are responsible for the delivery address on your order. Please check it before you place the order. We ship to the address exactly as it appears on the order, and we do not verify or correct addresses on your behalf.

Please include everything the carrier needs in order to reach you — unit or suite number, buzzer or entry code, gate code, business name, and any access instruction particular to your building. A missing buzz code is one of the most common reasons a plant sits in a truck or a depot for an extra day.

Purolator and UPS do not deliver to PO Boxes. Please give us a street address.

We are not responsible for delay, damage or loss caused by an address that is incomplete, incorrect, or missing access information.

If a parcel cannot be delivered because of an address problem and is returned to the carrier's depot or warehouse, it is your responsibility to contact the carrier and arrange collection. Once a parcel has entered the carrier's return process it is no longer in our hands, and we cannot retrieve it for you.

If a parcel comes back to us

If a parcel is returned to our office — because of an address problem, because delivery was refused, or because it was not collected from the carrier — we will contact you. Plants that make the journey twice rarely survive it, and no refund is issued for them. Where you would like the order sent again and the plants are still viable, new postage is payable by you, and we are not able to guarantee their condition.

Address changes are possible only before dispatch, and must be sent to us by email. Once a parcel is with the carrier, its destination cannot be changed.

3. Order Processing Time

In-stock orders

Orders containing only in-stock plants are prepared and dispatched within 2–4 business days, following the dispatch schedule below. In cold weather this may take longer, as we wait for conditions that are safe for the plants to travel.

Preorder plants

Preorder plants are not in stock. They are imported for you and arrive on the schedule published for each import. Timing for preorders, newly arrived plants, mixed orders and orders placed on hold is set out in full on our Processing and Shipping Time page, and the progress of each import batch is posted on our Preorder Status Tracking page.

You will receive an email notification when your order has shipped.

4. Dispatch Schedule & Requesting a Day

Our office is open Monday to Friday, 10 am – 5 pm Eastern, and is closed on Saturday and Sunday.

Asking us to ship on a particular day

Unless you ask otherwise, we dispatch your order on the next suitable date in the schedule above. If the day matters to you, tell us before dispatch — for example, if you would prefer your order to leave on a Monday so that it cannot sit in a depot over a weekend. We will do our best to accommodate it.

If you will not be home

If you are travelling, moving, or otherwise unable to receive your order, please tell us before it is dispatched and we will hold it for you. Once a parcel has left our office we cannot recall it.

5. Shipping Rates & Services

Shipping rates are calculated at checkout and depend on the size and weight of your order and on your address. You choose the service at checkout, and we send your order by the service you selected and paid for.

For small parcels — five items or fewer, or under 1 lb — our rates are competitive, and where a faster service would benefit the plants we are often happy to upgrade it at our own expense. Larger parcels cost more to send.

If you have more than one order that can travel together, we will combine postage where possible. Where combining requires an adjustment we will contact you first, and your order may be placed on hold until we hear back.

6. Carriers We Use

We ship plants with Purolator and UPS.

If you need your order sent with a particular carrier, please tell us before dispatch.

7. Transit Times Are Not Guaranteed

All transit times quoted at checkout are estimates provided by the carrier, not guarantees. Once a parcel leaves our office it is in the carrier's hands, and the route it takes, the depots it passes through and the day it is delivered are decided by the carrier alone.

Purolator and UPS do not compensate for late delivery on the services we use. A service sold as next-day may take two or three days. Express and priority services cost considerably more, but they too carry no enforceable time guarantee — paying for a faster service buys a higher priority, not a promise.

We are not able to compensate for carrier delays, misrouting, or the consequences of either, including harm to plants caused by a longer than expected journey. Where a carrier has failed to meet its own service standard, that claim lies between you and the carrier, and you would need to raise it with them directly.

During peak periods — November and December in particular — carrier volumes rise sharply and transit times lengthen across the board. Please order well ahead during these months.

If a delivery matters on a specific date, please order well ahead of it.

8. Choosing a Slower Service

We always recommend the fastest service you can reasonably take. Plants are perishable, and every additional day in transit costs them condition.

Where a slower service is chosen, a degree of transit wear must be expected — commonly in the range of 10–15%. This includes:

• dried or shrivelled roots;
• damp packaging;
• yellowed leaves;
• leaf drop.

This is normal for bare-root plants in transit. It is consistent with the AS-IS condition on which all of our plants are sold, as described in our Terms and Explanations, and it is not compensated.

Buds and flowers

Plants sent in bud or in bloom frequently lose their flowers on the journey — buds abort, and open flowers bruise or drop. This happens regardless of how carefully a plant is packed. Buds and flowers are never guaranteed, and their loss in transit is not compensated. If you are buying a plant for a flower that is open now, please consider collecting it in person instead.

9. How Your Plants Are Packed

Every order is packed by our standard method, which is chosen to protect the plant in transit. We do not offer special or gift packaging, and we are not able to pack an order to a customer's own specification.

Where a listing describes a plant as bare-root, you should expect it to arrive without growing medium and without a pot — or with only very simple packing material used to hold moisture around the roots. This is the condition in which plants must legally enter Canada, and it is how they are sent on to you.

Packing material is chosen for the plant's protection, not for presentation.

10. Seasonal Shipping — Cold & Heat

Plants cannot travel safely in every temperature. We decide whether it is safe to ship on the day, based on conditions along the route and at your address. If it is not safe, we will contact you and hold your order until conditions improve.

Cold weather

Winter shipping protection — insulation and a heat pack — is required for every order travelling in cold weather, and is added at checkout. Plants sent through a Canadian winter without it do not survive the journey, and no carrier service is fast enough to make up the difference.

Plants shipped without winter protection, where the customer has requested this against our advice, are not covered by our Live Arrival Guarantee.

Hot weather

Heat is as dangerous to a plant as cold. The inside of a sealed parcel becomes far hotter than the air around it, and a delivery vehicle or a doorstep in full sun is hotter again. In hot weather we strongly recommend the fastest service available, and we ask that you be ready to bring the parcel indoors on the day it arrives.

Damage resulting from a slower service chosen during hot weather falls under Section 8 and is not compensated.

11. Local Pickup

Pickup is available by appointment only, at our office at Hwy 7 / Bayview, Richmond Hill, between 10 am and 5 pm. The exact address is sent to you once your time is confirmed. Our address is not open to the public, and any visit without an appointment will be turned away.

We do not work on Saturday or Sunday. If a weekend collection is arranged with us during the week, we can prepare your order in advance and leave it ready.

12. Tracking, Delays & Lost Parcels

When your order ships you will receive an email containing a tracking number. Please allow up to 48 hours for the carrier's tracking information to appear.

If you have not received your order within 21 days of your shipping confirmation email, please contact us at info@orchidmart.ca with your name and order number, and we will open an enquiry with the carrier.

Once a parcel is marked delivered by the carrier, responsibility for it passes to you. Plants left in a vehicle, on a porch, in a mailroom or in a parcel locker are outside our control and outside our guarantee. If you will not be able to receive and open your shipment on the day it arrives, please do not order.

13. If a Plant Arrives Damaged

Photograph the plant and the packaging as you unpack, and contact us at info@orchidmart.ca within 24 hours of the delivery time recorded by the carrier (for pickup orders, within 24 hours of collection). Claims received after 24 hours cannot be processed, regardless of the condition of the plant.

What must be included in a claim, and how claims are resolved, is set out in our Return and Refund Policy.

14. Returns

All plant sales are final. This applies to every plant we sell without exception — Preorder, In Stock, Bare-root, Local Growing and Potted alike. Plants are covered only by our Live Arrival Guarantee, and may be cancelled only in the narrow windows described in our Return and Refund Policy.

Non-plant items — growing media, pots, fertilisers, tools and decorative items — may be returned under the conditions set out in that same policy.

15. Contact

Email is the primary way to reach us. We do not take phone calls or text messages. Please write to info@orchidmart.ca with your order number. We reply within 1–2 business days, Monday to Friday.

Changes to an order — cancelling, refunds, adding items, changing an address, or arranging shipping and pickup timing — are only actioned in writing, so that both sides have a record of what was agreed.

Orchidmart Inc. · Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada · info@orchidmart.ca