Shipping Trees? YES!
In Canada, I have found only one retail plant nursery that offers Japanese maples for sale and shipped to your door. And the value of what I received compared to the cost was not great. Why?
Japanese maples are not a novelty plant at this point, I mean, you can find them at box stores! But retail sellers such as nurseries/garden centres that offer online sales and shipping of Japanese maples, that is definitely a niche market that hasn't been tapped. And for good reason. Shipping trees is not simple.
Shipping trees means larger boxes, time-sensitive shipping timeframes, safely securing live plants into a box, and many more concerns. Let's look at these issues.
First off, shipping any plant means time-sensitivity. You can't have a plant inside a box for weeks. Plants need to get to their destination quickly. Within BC, this is easy to do, but shipping to Ontario or Québec means the cost goes up significantly. At Simply Japanese Maples, we have already experienced what happens when the courier doesn't get a shipment to the customer in the guaranteed timeframe. So, we don't risk it anymore and now only use one of the fastest delivery times. This has created a big hurdle for our Ontario and Québec customers and for that we are sorry and hope to eliminate the challenge in the future. However, the blow is softened if multiple trees are ordered, and of course, if the customer is ordering trees they cannot find elsewhere.
Safely and securely packaging a tree is no cakewalk either. We have overcome this issue with the use of an amazing tool that enables us to use industrial box staples to build up the interior of the box with cardboard inserts used to support the trees and their containers. In this way, we can use mainly cardboard and paper to secure the trees. We do have to utilize plastic to wrap the containers but it's all recyclable plastic.
And lastly, big boxes mean bigger problems. Ok, not that big of a problem, but longer boxes for our little trees to comfortably fit into, sometimes with branches gently bent over, cost a little more than sending your grandma a box of chocolates. So, we use the smallest boxes possible for each order.
Simply Japanese Maples is extremely excited to accept the challenge of being the first true Japanese maples online retailer. We offer great value for our 1 and 2 gallon sized container trees. These trees are stronger, larger and provide significantly better value than the personal shopping experience I shared earlier. So, in BC, for a shipping cost of about $35 +/- we can send 2, 3 or even 4 trees to you in one shipping box. We understand that you may only want one tree. We totally get that. We just want to be clear that where possible, buy more than one tree to get more value out of your shipping costs.
After you place your order your trees will be packaged up on a Monday and in the mail that same day. You will receive your order with the same business week.
Simply Japanese Maples has more than 60 different varieties/cultivars available (so far!) and more available for local pickup. We tend to focus on less commonly seen Japanese maples. With the price of gasoline and your time spent, as well as our expertise, we provide a great service to the Japanese maple lovers in Canada.
You can find a short video on our packaging of a tree here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zET7wuRUP9U&t=4s