Shipping & Handling
How a living plant gets from our benches to your door without dying on the way.
Two ways to get your plants
| Method | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shipping | $1.00 per plant $6.00 minimum |
Lower 48 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Packed Mon–Wed, 2–4 days in transit (allow a few more for VI). |
| Local pickup | Free | Pinellas Park, FL. By appointment only — call (727) 254-9153 first. |
Shipping is $1.00 a plant. The smallest order we accept is six plants, so the floor is $6.00; after that every extra plant adds $1.00.
| Plants | Shipping | |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | $6.00 | the minimum order |
| 12 | $12.00 | two varieties |
| 24 | $24.00 | four varieties |
| 72 | $72.00 | a full tray |
No dimensional-weight surprises and no fuel surcharges bolted on at the end — what the cart says is what you pay.
Local pickup
Pickup is free, in Pinellas Park, FL, and by appointment only. Call (727) 254-9153 to check availability and book a time. We give you the exact address once your appointment is confirmed — please do not just turn up, there is not always someone here and we would rather not waste your drive.
Cash is accepted on pickup; card, Venmo and Zelle all work too. Collecting in person also means no transit stress on the plants at all, which for anything cold-sensitive in winter is genuinely the better option if you are close enough.
When we ship
We pack Monday through Wednesday only. This is deliberate: a box shipped on a Thursday or Friday has a real chance of sitting in an unheated depot over the weekend, and that is where mail-order plants die. If you order Thursday afternoon, your plants go out the following Monday.
Orders take 2–4 days to process before they go into that packing window, and transit is typically 2–4 days after that.
If the product page said "pre-order", that one is different: neither we nor our grower has it on hand, and the expected wait is stated on the product page itself. Ordering holds your place in the queue for the next crop. You will hear from us if anything is going to take materially longer than we said.
How we pack
- The root ball is bagged and secured so soil does not shake loose in transit.
- The plant is braced inside an insulated box so it cannot rattle around.
- Heat packs are added automatically when forecast temperatures along the route drop below 45°F.
- Boxes are marked as live plants so carriers handle them accordingly.
You get a tracking number by email the moment the label is created.
Extreme weather holds
If your area is in a hard freeze or a serious heat wave, we will hold your order and contact you rather than ship a plant into weather it will not survive. You are welcome to tell us to send it anyway — but a shipment you asked us to push through a weather hold is not covered by our claims policy.
Risk in transit
Orders ship at the purchaser's risk — once a carrier collects the box it becomes your property, and a claim for loss or damage in transit is filed with that carrier. We pack carefully, keep records, and will supply whatever a carrier claim needs, but we cannot refund freight damage on their behalf. Anything that arrives wrong, diseased, or untrue to name is a different matter and is covered by our guarantee — photograph it and tell us within 48 hours.
Where we ship
We ship to the lower 48 states — the contiguous United States plus Washington DC — and to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
U.S. Virgin Islands. St Croix, St Thomas and St John are all served. VI boxes travel USPS Priority Mail at the same $1.00 per plant as everywhere else, and we issue the USDA phytosanitary certificate the territory requires for live plants — there is nothing for you to file. Allow a few extra days in transit. A VI address is also the one place we will ship to a PO Box, since much of the territory has no street delivery.
We cannot ship to Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico. Live plants entering those territories need inspection paperwork we are not set up to issue, and the transit times involved are hard on a plant regardless. We would rather not take your money for something that arrives dead. We do not ship internationally for the same reasons.
State restrictions
Live plants cross state agricultural lines, and several states restrict specific genera to protect their own commercial growers from pests and disease. We enforce this at checkout — you will be told before you pay, never after.
Something went wrong?
Email russ@tropiplants.com or call (727) 254-9153 with your order number and a photo, within 48 hours of delivery. We answer every message, usually the same day.