Gardening Express Avis 

0 stars
Huge regrets ordering from these jokers. I wish I had read the reviews before ordering from Gardening Express (who btw are still blaming Christmas for not being 'express')

I've ordered 15 large plants/trees. 1 plant out of 15 has been delivered — yet my order is marked as complete and no one has had the courtesy to get back to my numerous requests.

The single plant that did arrive is in very poor condition and appears diseased, with significant damage and missing growth.

How does anyone get hold of this company?
They are not a serious plant company and they are not for people who care about plants (or their sanity).

Wish me luck trying to get my money back!

Ordered a persimmon tree, was sent a leafless bare root in May!, planted, waited a month and nothing, the small tree wasn’t even showing leaf buds. Complained and was told I only had 1 month to complain to receive a refund, surprised with the refund policy as I had been sent a supposedly dormant bare root plant (in May!)! The plant was clearly dead from the start! Appalling company and service. Will not order from this company again

Avoid.
Of course I have now seen the ugly underbelly of this business online.
They are a shockingly bad business.
I ordered bulbs on 30/12 due to arrive within 14 days.
My calendar says it’s the 22/1 today.
The customer service rep is getting feisty and telling me I can’t cancel as the “goods are in the system”.
I have tracked the order and the Couriers have not even received the bulbs.
Credit card companies can start claim back with jokers like these.
Never trust a business that tells lies…

My son ordered two holly trees for Christmas they arrived in time but nothing like the photos or description,one was just a stick not suitable to display outside the front door certainly not ball shaped
Emailed numerous times with no replies.
Steer clear of this company .

Bought a large winter flowering shrub that was dead on arrival, the packaging and pot containing the plant was smashed to pieces. I contacted Customer Services who weren’t in the slightest bit interested and who refused to accept a return or offer a replacement. Total cowboy outfit, all they want is your money and they are not interested in customer satisfaction. Order at your peril.

I bought online a ‘Large Snowy White Cyclamen’ plant on 1 Dec 2025 from Gardening Express. The plant arrived 18 days later in a dreadful state. The packaging (a long thin brown cardboard box) was far too narrow & tall for the plant. There was no packaging material - nothing. Furthermore, the box was bashed & the top fully open exposing the plant to the elements. The plant was undersized, bone dry, with torn leaves, and the few white flowers that remained on this poor specimen were damaged & hanging. The plant looked like something you would see on the reduced/half dead trolley at a garden centre. What an absolute disgrace it was. Absolutely nothing like the stock photo on their website. Straight away I contacted the company. I took videos, photos etc of this plant & the packaging. There is no telephone number for this company, all correspondence is via email. They are very slow to reply. They state you need to provide photos, A4 white packing sheet (which I did not receive) white label of plant etc. I provided this. After a lengthy period they reply & again request the same information you have previously provided. You reply stating you have sent it, but you do it again & AGAIN they state we need the following … you get the drift! It’s like being on a hamster wheel. It’s like they are being deliberately evasive & they are just trying to wear you down so you stop contacting g them. Not once did they apologise or were even empathetic. It is a very strange shopping experience that I have never had before. I have read on other review sites people describing this firm as ‘cowboys’ & ‘cons’. All the negative terrible reviews are similar to my story. I wish I had read the reviews before my purchase. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY! You might as well go & throw your money down an open drain. How Trading Standards & such like have allowed this Company to continue to trade is beyond me. Believe all the terrible reviews you read - they are true, avoid!

Horrendous experience with a christmas tree that i ordered - wrong type, wrong size and packaged so badly, branches broken as well as being lopsided from all directions.
Customer Service asked for photos which I sent but they were not accepted. They said to return it by a courier that I should pay for myself! This is ridiculous as I can't re-wrap a tree that has been wrapped with netting by a machine and courier costs would exceed the refund amount. Now I have to pay somebody to take it away as it's too heavy and spiky to put in the car for the tip!

Avoid this company! They used to be good but have gone seriously downhill!

Ordered a 7-8ft Christmas Tree. What arrived was a 6ft 3" tree. I asked for a replacement tree of the correct size. The company told me I had to unwrap the tree, measure it and then send details to the company. The tree is wrapped in continuous black plastic and is very heavy. I have not heard from them again. I trusted this company with my money and my order, they took the money and sent the wrong item. They have spoilt Christmas. I want my money back and this tree taken away. They need lessons in Customer Service!!

Two Xmas trees were ordered and paid for in OCTOBER for delivery slot 1-6 th December .
One tree rocked up today 9th December an the other is still AWOL . Its not hard one job deliver within 6 days a HUGE window especially when its your only job . Platitudes of "currently experiencing some small delays" actually doesn't do it Karen AKA Gardening Express .....so angry I am blocking you from now on . You genuinely are ruining our Christmas

Ordered some specific pansies- lots of them, and received bog standard pansy's- not what we ordered. IMMEDIATELY contacted Gardening Express and have sent 5 emails with photos, keep asking me for more photos. Nothing now- they seem to have ignored me now Order number 700965961

Ordered their offer of Houseplant Roulette - Lucky Dip Houseplant Selection
H25531 12 £24.00
Subtotal £24.00
Shipping & Handling £6.99
Grand Total £30.99
DREADFUL !
The plants arrived in a damaged box , one plant dead and two already dried up one further one had its leaves snapped off, subsequently has died
Pots were broken
Customer service advised taking photos with labels in pots showing and full length of plant. I did do this
Two weeks and no response, they say 5 days response time
I would not buy again from them and urge others to take care

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES would I recommend this company. I ordered a huge amount of plants for autumn planting this October and spent a lot of money. My issue is that despite repeated messages they refuse to answer me and there is NO OTHER WAY. to contact them other than the message system which they refuse to answer. Judging from my experience and others who have reviewed here, beware of this company which is so difficult to contact- there is obviously a reason for that.My plants stayed in the depot of the courier company for 14 days in boxes, starved of light and water and consequently arrival 89% of them were dead. I sent many messages to gardening express before arrival alerting them that although their site said the plants were dispatched, that they were still in transit and I suspected they would die. This was their responsibility to sort out and although they did answer two of my messages saying they would ‘chase this up’ on arrival as suspected, my fears were correct. The plants had sat four two weeks in the dark with no water. Two huge pallets arrived in a disgraceful state. They were nearly all dead and shrivelled. I immediately contacted Gardening Express with photographs as proof including the dates. In all I have sent at least seven messages to them because there is no phone to call or address. They are still ignoring me
A month later. Their guarantees on the site are not worth anything , they laughably say that you have 14 days to return damaged plants! I was supposed to send two huge pallets back to them on a truck to where ? No address. At my expense? This company is behaving in a fraudulent way and I am not going to let them get away with this . I will be contacting trading standards and the small claims court. Please please do not buy from
them - I wish I had gone on trust pilot before I did . I have now read other reviews who have had a similar experience and I wish I had not spent such a large sum of money.

Post script:
After I threatened legal proceedings and the law regarding this, Gardening Express did refund me the money. Amazingly I did reorder a small order from them again to see what would happen and this arrived safely and in good condition.I have read a lot of the reviews and recently they seem to be doing better but I see that the delivery company is still letting them down with the lack of care and attention to delivery and though my recent order arrived untouched the original arrived very battered packaging. The delivery company is at fault for a lot and seems to not care about these plants and the fact that they are living things that have been carefully grown and packaged.Gardening Express in my view are flying by the seat of their pants probably to keep their costs down but actually their business model will only be fit for purpose if they get these deliveries right. Consequently, customers are incensed while GE builds a barrier of 'no telephone contact' to protect themselves and the 'contact' form is frustrating for their customers as it is removed and you wait days for responses sometimes. There must be a better, less stressful and more decent ethical way to run a business. The variety and condition of plants is superb when it all works. I think they need to bring someone in to completely overhaul this business and reputaion wise they will have to reprove themselves. Its a pity but i do appreciate that they sent me back my money and see this as a sign of improvement. I just wish I hadn't had to threaten legal action.

Plants arrived in pathetic condition, mostly dried and dying!!
Despite emailing and sending them photos multiple times, we have had no response, just automated replies!
Very poor show and no customer service at all.
Would have given minus stars if I could.

VERY poor quality plants received, emailed my dissatisfaction, as everyone else……no reply to emails. I tried more than once to contact them. No phone number to call, only email available which quite conveniently they never reply to.
Take this as a warning…..do not order from this terrible business.

I ordered hedging plants. The order form clearly stated “Evergreen Portuguese Laurel – Bushy Plants for Hedging – circa 80 to 120 cm” as did the Picklist with the initials of the sorter and checker. What we got was very poor quality plants that were 170 cm, taller than stated with no side branches or leaves on the first 50cm above ground level. They were straggly, not bushy and too tall to be planted as hedging plants – in fact they should have been dug up and burned years ago!
This company simply ignores UK consumer protection law - what I got was not as described (and illustrated on their website), not of merchantable quality and not fit for purpose. They have a laughable 14 day return for refund policy – which sounds great until you get prices from couriers to return the plants and of course this cost is not refundable. Other customers report being ignored when they do return goods (and of course they have no phone number for ‘Customer Service’) – sounds like good money being thrown after bad.
It would seem that Trading Standards need to be made aware of the way that this company treats its customers – in the meantime AVOID THIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE.

I purchased a pack of heathers from this company and planted them in special compost for these plants but within one month a quarter of them had died,(3 were dead on arrival) .I complained to the company and was told I was too late as should have done it within 14 days.I expected and plants to last longer than 1 month and as a result will never use or recommend this company.Most nurseries guarantee their plants longer than 4 weeks.

⭐☆☆☆☆ Extremely Disappointed – Poor Quality Plants, No Response, and Misleading Practices
I’ve spent over £100 with Gardening Express this year, but after my latest order I’ll never buy from them again. Several plants arrived in terrible condition — wilted, spent, and damaged due to poor packaging and squashed boxes. The Rudbeckia ‘Little Goldstar’ were completely past flowering and nothing like the “strong, healthy plants” shown online. Some Echinaceas and Polemoniums arrived with snapped stems and crushed pots.
When I contacted customer service with clear photos, I received a generic template reply demanding more pictures, labels, and paperwork that didn’t even exist in the box. Since then, I’ve had no reply or resolution at all. The company has simply ignored my follow-up messages.
To make matters worse, I’ve since learned Gardening Express has been featured on BBC Watchdog for exactly these kinds of issues — misleading product listings, poor plant quality, and avoiding refunds. Unfortunately, my experience aligns perfectly with that reputation.
Avoid this company at all costs. Their plants are poorly packed, customer service is evasive, and the whole process feels designed to wear customers down rather than put things right. There are far better online nurseries that deliver what they promise and treat customers with respect.

I’ve ordered loads from this company, often plants have been ‘on offer’ for really good prices, it’s been relatively hit and miss with the quality of things, but if somethings arrived and it hasn’t done as well as I hoped it would, I’ve not been too bothered because of the low price.

However I placed an order a few weeks ago and it arrived with an item missing - I contacted customer services who took over a week to get back to me asking for photographs. I sent them and they are now ignoring me (it’s been a month since I sent the pictures) - I have chased them but ultimately ended up doing a chargeback through my bank.

Incredibly disappointed in this company, their website insinuates a high level of quality customer service which simply isn’t true.

I won’t be ordering from them any more..

Ordered 8 heathers, two pansies, and two violas. Violas fine. Heathers out of season, despite being advertised as "studded with buds and flowers in season". Pansies not the right variety. Contacted customer service three times asking them to ship the correct pansies or just issue a refund. Got three bizarre responses via email from "Kit" who, is probably just a bot - first one asked to send more photos, which I did - no response. Responses 2 and 3 did not at all address my complaint and I got no responses to my responses. Never ordering from this sham business again and they should be investigated for shady practices. No phone number advertised for customer service tells you everything you need to know.

I bought 2 bare rooted plum trees in June. On arrival I notified Gardening Express that they seemed very dry. They suggested I gave them time, which I did.
They were potted into new sterile JI No2 compost in large pots and placed into the "nursery" area of my garden along with a pear tree, 2 hazelnuts and other new plants.
Everything grew strongly apart from the plum trees, one of which was clearly a "dead stick", and one which grew strongly, but only from the rootstock, not the scion.
I contacted Gardening Express on their contact page, and received a reply from someone called Dermot who asked for images of the plants which I sent by return. I have heard nothing since. I contacted their customer service director, and also a new claim via their contact page but have had no further contact.
I have had decent plants in the past from this company, but they will not enter any meaningful conversation about their warranty, which is clearly worthless.
I have given up trying to get any support and am currently writing an article to my local gardening society to suggest they avoid this company. I suggest you all do the same.