Why plants die in transit
Most plants bought online in India do not die in your house. They die in a cardboard box, somewhere between a warehouse and a delivery van, and they arrive already finished — it just takes a fortnight for you to be sure.
This is the article nobody selling plants wants to write, which is exactly why it is worth reading before you buy from anyone.
Heat is the thing that kills, not the journey
A sealed carton in a stationary van is an oven. Vidarbha summers reach 44–48°C in the shade, and the inside of a parcel sitting on a loading dock goes well past that. A plant cannot transpire its way out of a closed box: the leaves lose water, the roots cannot replace it, and the plant cooks.
This is why we do not ship live plants at all through May and June. Pots, potting mix and tools carry on as normal. It costs us two months of plant revenue a year and it is not negotiable — the alternative is sending you something that is already dead when it is handed over.
The weekend is the second killer
A parcel dispatched on a Thursday sits in a hub over Saturday and Sunday. Four days in the dark with no water is survivable for a ZZ plant and fatal for a flowering jasmine.
We used to work around this by dispatching Monday to Wednesday only. We no longer try to work around it at all: we stopped couriering plants and deliver by hand in Nagpur instead. It costs us every customer outside one city, and it is the only version of this we can do honestly.
A plant that has just travelled cannot travel again
Bare-root nursery stock arrives with its soil structure gone and its fine roots damaged. It needs two to four weeks in a pot to establish before it can survive another journey.
This is why plants here are either grown from our own cuttings and seed, or bought in and then potted and settled for about three weeks before they are listed as available. A shop that can ship you anything the same day is a shop that is passing bare-root stock straight through, and the mortality lands on you rather than on them.
What good packing actually does
Not much, honestly, compared to the three things above. Packing keeps the pot from moving and the soil from spilling. It does not stop heat, and it does not add days of survivable transit.
Be suspicious of any listing where the packaging is the main promise. The way a plant is moved matters more than the box it moves in, and that is harder to photograph.
What to do in the first hour it arrives
Open it immediately, even if you are busy. Take the plant out, put it somewhere shaded and out of wind, and water it if the mix is dry. Do not repot it, do not fertilise it, and do not put it in direct sun for about a week — it has been in the dark and full sun will scorch it.
Some leaf drop in the first fortnight is normal and is not a dead plant. If it is genuinely damaged, photograph it the day it arrives; that is what the 30-day replacement runs on.
Common questions
Do you ship outside Nagpur?
Not at the moment. We deliver by hand within Nagpur city and the surrounding postal zone. Everything on this page is why: a plant we cannot hand to you is a plant we cannot promise arrives alive.
Why can I not order plants in May and June?
Vidarbha summers reach 44–48°C, and that heat is hard on a plant that has just been lifted and moved, even across town. Live plants are unavailable through those two months. Potting mix and tools are unaffected.
My plant dropped leaves after delivery. Is it dying?
Usually not. Some leaf drop in the first two weeks is a normal stress response. Keep it shaded, water when the top of the mix is dry, and do not repot or feed it for a fortnight.
Why did you stop shipping?
Because the three things above cannot be packed around. We ran per-plant distance limits for a while - sturdier plants to about 1,500 km, delicate ones capped far shorter - and a hand delivery in one city is simply a better answer than a good guess about a courier network.