Delivery

Where we deliver, and what it costs

We deliver to UK mainland addresses only, for one flat charge of £9.95 per order however many trees are on it. The charge is shown in your basket before you pay, and nothing is added to it afterwards.

We cannot send a living tree outside the United Kingdom. Moving plants across a border needs plant health paperwork we do not hold, and a tree in a customs queue is a tree in trouble.

Areas we cannot reach on the flat rate

A few postcode areas need a ferry, a second courier or a much longer journey, and a young tree does not travel well on any of them. These are checked before you pay, so you will never be charged for a delivery we cannot make:

When your tree will leave us

We dispatch within 10 working days of your order. You will get an email when the box leaves us, with the courier and the tracking number, so you know which day to be about.

In a hard frost or a heatwave we will sometimes hold a tree back for a few days rather than post it into weather that could kill it. If we do that we will email you and tell you why, and you can always ask us to cancel and refund instead of waiting.

In any event we will deliver within 30 days of your order unless we agree something different with you, as the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 require. If a delay becomes unreasonable you can cancel and we will refund you in full.

What arrives

The Original package contains:

• A young tree, grown for its first years before it reaches you
• Your digital certificate and tree record
• Planting and first-year care guidance

The Heritage package contains:

• Everything in the Original package
• A larger, further-established tree
• An engraved identity tag for the tree
• A printed certificate alongside the digital record

Your tree is a young tree, not a mature specimen — the illustrations on our tree pages show what the species becomes, not what comes out of the box. The exact height varies between individual trees, because they are grown rather than manufactured.

How it is packed

The tree travels upright in a tall box, with its roots and pot wrapped so the compost stays moist and stays put, and its branches gathered loosely enough not to be bent. The box is marked as a live plant, and it goes with a tracked courier on the shortest service we can sensibly use.

Some leaf loss, a few bent shoots and compost that has shifted in transit are normal and not a sign of a damaged tree. A broken main stem, a smashed pot or bone-dry compost are not — see below.

On the day it arrives

• Open the box the same day if you possibly can. A tree should not sit boxed.
• Unwrap the tree, stand it upright and water the compost until it is damp right through.
• Keep it out of direct sun, hard wind and frost for the first few days while it settles. A sheltered spot outdoors, or a cool porch, is better than a warm room.
• Do not rush to plant it. If the ground is frozen or baked hard, leave the tree in its pot and wait — the growing guidance in the box explains how long it can happily stay there.
• Take a photograph before anything else changes. It makes a good first entry on your tree’s timeline.

Please give us an address where somebody can take a box in. A courier may leave it in a safe place or with a neighbour if nobody answers, which is fine for a parcel and not ideal for a tree.

If it arrives damaged, or does not arrive

Photograph it before you unwrap anything further, keep the packaging, and email hello@deathtree.co.uk with your order number. Tell us as soon as you can — a damaged living thing gets worse with time, and early photographs make it obvious what happened in transit.

We will replace the tree or refund you, whichever you would rather, and we pay the cost of getting a faulty tree back to us. Those are your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and nothing on this page reduces them.

The tree is our responsibility until it is delivered to the address you gave us, or to someone you asked us to leave it with. If tracking says delivered and you have nothing, tell us and we will chase the courier — that is our job, not yours.

If a delivery fails and the box comes back to us, we will email you to arrange another attempt. Where a tree has to travel twice because the address given was wrong or incomplete, we may need to charge the delivery fee again, and we will always ask you first.

Changing your mind

Delivery is separate from your right to cancel. You have 14 days from receiving your tree to change your mind, and the cancellation and returns page explains how that works for something alive. Our terms cover the rest of the order.