No Spring Mail Order Season in 2019:
Langley, March 23, 2019
Dear customers,
We regret to have to inform you that we will not be able to operate a spring mail order service this year. Due to six solid weeks of frost in the ground here in Langley during February and March, followed by a week of 20 degree Celsius weather, we have not been able to follow our usual clean-up and propagation cycle and since the bulk of this will now stretch into April and May we will not be able to spend the time with the packing and shipping of plants simultaneously. We hoped earlier this month we could but our current assessment tells us we can’t.
We will however offer two options. First, you can send us your order for shipping in September 2019 and we will reserve these plants for you until then or Second, if you prefer to wait until next spring, we will reserve them for you for later. For both options, no pre-payment is required.
We will honour and send out all orders placed and confirmed up to March 23 2019.
We hope you will understand our situation and look forward to be able to help you satisfy your plant lust in late summer, early fall or next year.
All other mail order limitations and instructions remain in effect for ordering.
Kind regards,
Lambert Vrijmoed
OUR MAIL ORDER SERVICE COMBINED WITH OUR RETAIL AND GROWING OF PLANTS HAS BECOME TOO BUSY. AS A RESULT WE CAN ONLY ACCEPT MAIL ORDERS FROM EXISTING CLIENTS AND ARE SORRY TO ADVISE YOU THAT WE CANNOT TAKE ON NEW ACCOUNTS.
Ordering: Please order by email or mail. Since we are not set up specifically as a mail order business, we can not take orders by phone. Even though you are an existing customer, please insure to include your name and full shipping address in each order you place. Minimum order: $ 50.00 plant value.
Please E-mail your order to: freespiritnursery@shaw.ca or Mail the order directly to the nursery and we will take good care of it. We will acknowledge the receipt of your order at our earliest convenience. We only ship within Canada.
IMPORTANT CHANGES IN 2019: Since you are a returning customer and assumed in good standing, in order to cut down on our administration, we will NOT accept prepayment of the plants. We will accept your order and generate the invoice after the plants are shipped and will trust you to reimburse us for the costs of the plants, handling and shipping as usual. This will on our end eliminate possible refunds, simplify the billing and eliminate the current deposits of multiple cheques or E-transfers per order.
Shipping dates: Let us know what is convenient for you and we will try to accommodate accordingly.
Check your calendar when it is best for you and the plants to have them arrive. Please allow 2 to 7 working days for plants to arrive. Let us know immediately if anything has gone wrong with your package.
Hardiness: Please make sure to check on the hardiness of plants in this list for your own garden situation. We can not assume any responsibility for your particular micro climate. The USDA hardiness zones are, to our estimation, just a guideline: there is a lot of room for unexpected success and misunderstood failure. Especially on the prairies we advise to plant as soon as frost has abandoned the soil and not later than early summer. Shelter plants from harsh wind and or intense sun and keep moist until established.
Shipping and Handling charges: We have separated these two charges to better reflect the actual cost of getting the plants to you. Our plants are grown in a variety of pot sizes, ranging from 1 gallon to 4” containers. The root balls are, where needed, left as intact as possible, assuring your success. If we decide to send you bare root divisions, they will be generous and willing to please. This all means that our plants are heavier than usual and a bit more cumbersome for us to deal with. Only in certain cases can we send plants in pots larger than 1 gallon. Additional charges might apply.
Do realize that some plants, even when they are close to or flowering size, are naturally small in crown, tuber, corm or root i.e. Anemonella.
The shipping will be charged at cost. Please realize that we ship well sized plants and we do our best to ship as economically as we can. A good sized box containing 10 to 20 plants can cost up to $100.00 to ship. Shipments of 5 plants usually start at around $30.00. We will trust you to reimburse these costs to us.
The handling charges include pulling plants from holding areas and or greenhouses, labeling, stripping the containers (if possible), wrapping and bagging the plants properly in bags or paper and packing them securely into boxes. Then we take your order to the nearest Canada Post distribution center which, on a good day, is about a 10 minute drive from the nursery. The handling charges are added to the subtotal before taxes and are subject to HST/GST. Since the plant prices in our list are the prices “as you pick them out at the nursery”, you will appreciate that with the added time and materials needed to process your order, we have to add this charge.
A flat handling charge applies for all orders up to and including 5 plants: $ 20.00
Each additional plant in 4”, 5” or 1 gallon pot or “bare root” $ 1.50 ea.
Plants marked in our list with * behind the prices are 4” or 5” (12.5cm.) pots, they can be round, square or band pots. No markings: usually a 1 gallon or 15 cm pots.
Only on rare occasions will we ship sizes larger than 1 gallon or 15cm. pots. Additional charges might apply.
We prefer to ship regular (=expedited) mail with Canada Post as a general rule. We will only resort to Express Post if either you insist on it or if the timing is such that the plants could be stuck in transit too long, putting the plants at risk. Expedited mail is often half to one third of the cost compared to Express post.
Method of Payment: E-Transfer or Cheque. Payment will be required and an invoice will be mailed to you after you have received the plants. Spring is our busiest time of year so it might take a few weeks before you will receive the invoice. Please, remit the exact invoice amount due to prevent us having to amend our records.
Availability: We strive to have all items on our current assortment list available but sometimes we suffer a crop failure, have to blame weather conditions, plants are not rooted yet or might simply be sold out.