Guarantees on plants

Fall is the "other" planting season!  Several questions are asked repeatedly in the plant seller's world and I thought this is a good time to explain the answers again.

Are your plants guaranteed?  We do not guarantee the plants we sell.  The main reason here is that we sell the plants at the lowest price we possibly can and quite simply, we are too small a business to be able to guarantee plants.  The large garden centers and especially the big box stores buy large volumes, get better prices, and use bigger markups on the plants, so they can afford to guarantee plants.
Most Garden Centers never guarantee an annual, perennial, rose bush, water plants, house plants, plants planted in above ground containers or raised walled beds, and definitely not tropical plants.  They only guarantee trees and shrubs.

Do you guarantee plants that you plant?   I'll answer this with a series of questions that will be posed to you no matter where you bought your plants.
Did you water your plants?
If it has rained a lot, did you also water them?
Is there any sign that insects have infested your plant?   Did you take steps to alleviate that problem?
Did you or anyone else use an herbicide, such as Roundup, near the plant, possibly getting some on the plant?
Has the plant been damaged by a weedeater or lawnmower?
Is there signs of animal damage?

***Let me insert here that most customers call and tell us they have a problem & we try to diagnose what is going on and try to stop the problem before it kills the plant.

Most landscapers will guarantee trees & shrubs for a year, or  eighteen months, but they will ask all those questions first.   As in the first question above, guarantees do not apply to plants other than trees and shrubs.   Landscapers really should not replace plants that have not been cared for properly.  Also, acts of God, such as storm damage, flooding, fire, tornado, earthquake are not covered.  Many landscapers make exceptions because of the particular details in each situation.

***Another point is that a plant really should be 75% to 100% dead before you get a replacement.  A plant with a few brown leaves is not a dead plant!

One more point to mention is how the guarantee works:  Most landscapers will state in their guarantee that they will replace a plant once, but the guarantee does not apply to that replacement plant.  You can imagine that if he guaranteed that plant and it too died, replaced and guaranteed it's replacement, and it died, this could go on for eternity.  A landscaping business could not survive that scenario!!

Over my thirty something years in and around the plant business,  I have been asked a lot of strange questions.  One I'll never forget is the lady who bought two hanging baskets and called back a week or two later and told me her hanging basket plants had all died- did we guarantee them?  I proceeded to ask the burning question:  Did you water them?  How often and how much did you water them? (Some people over water everything, some people underwater)  The lady replied: "Water them? NOBODY told me I had to water them!!!!  If I had known I had to water them, I never would have bought them!!!!!"

The same thing happened in the fall with mums.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment here.

I hope you plant something this fall!! It really is a good time to plant.  Trees and shrubs, if properly cared for, will grow roots in the winter months so you have an established plant in the spring and summer that will survive the torturous hot months in Kentucky.  Happy planting!