Shipping Policy

FGMN Nursery — Field Logistics

We take shipping plants and beneficial organisms seriously. Every order is packed with care, experience, and intention — and because these are living things, timing, temperature, and handling all matter. Here’s how we protect your order, and how we support you fairly if something goes wrong.

01Coverage & geographic scope

Our standard shipping policies, protections, and guarantees apply to the 48 contiguous United States.

We do ship to Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico, but because transit times and conditions can be unpredictable, these orders ship at the customer’s liability. We’re unable to guarantee delivery condition, timing, or temperature exposure for these locations.

02Live Delivery Guarantee

48 contiguous states only

We guarantee that your plants and beneficial organisms will arrive healthy and ready to work on the first delivery attempt. If they don’t, we will resolve it, provided the conditions below are met.

To qualify for a replacement or store credit:
  • —Email us within 72 hours of delivery
  • —Someone must be available to receive the package promptly
  • —The guarantee applies only to the first delivery attempt
  • ×Packages left outside, in mailboxes, or on delivery vehicles for extended periods aren’t covered
  • ×Packages that are returned to FGMN — including refused deliveries, return-to-sender, unclaimed packages, and carrier returns following failed delivery attempts — are not covered
  • ×If the same product arrives in poor condition on two separate orders within 90 days, that product is covered on subsequent orders only when they ship overnight. The second report is settled as normal, and every other product you order remains covered.

We pack with care and insulate when needed, but even the best packing can’t protect a temperature-sensitive shipment if it sits unattended or makes a return trip through the carrier network. Open your package as soon as it arrives and reach out if something doesn’t look right.

03When we ship

U.S. only

We ship Monday through Thursday. Orders placed after Thursday ship the following Monday, so your organisms travel early in the week and aren’t sitting in a facility over the weekend.

Processing can take up to 7 days — we wait for the right life stage before shipping rather than sending an order out early. A shipment timed correctly is worth the short wait.

Most plants ship potted; larger plants may ship bare root when that’s the safest option. Each plant is wrapped in polyfill or paper, bundled, and secured. During extreme temperatures, we add insulation such as bubble wrap for additional protection.

Make sure someone is available to receive the package promptly. Our Live Delivery Guarantee applies only to the first delivery attempt.

04Address policy

We strongly discourage shipping to PO Boxes. PO Boxes are not serviced by UPS or FedEx, cannot accept oversized or temperature-sensitive packages reliably, and routinely sit unattended for extended periods — all of which are incompatible with shipping living organisms. Provide a valid residential or commercial street address at checkout.

If a PO Box address is used at checkout — or if a PO Box is disguised as a street address to bypass our checkout restrictions (including but not limited to: entering “PO Box,” “Box,” “PMB,” or a box number in the street address field; using the street address of a USPS post office, UPS Store, or other mail-receiving facility; using a mail forwarding service address; or any other workaround intended to route the package to a PO Box) — FGMN assumes no liability for the shipment under any circumstances. The Live Delivery Guarantee, our shipping coverage, carrier damage claims, and replacement or store credit policies do not apply. This includes packages that arrive non-viable, are lost in transit, are damaged, delayed, returned to sender, stolen, or held beyond a safe holding window. These shipments ship entirely at the customer’s risk, and any disputes or chargebacks filed on PO Box or PO Box–disguised shipments will be contested with this policy as evidence.

If an address is incorrect, incomplete, or not serviceable by USPS, UPS, or FedEx, we’re unable to honor our Live Delivery Guarantee. We also can’t replace orders that are delayed, lost, or damaged due to address errors.

Packages forwarded or rerouted through third-party services — including mail forwarding services, package consolidators, and freight forwarders — are not eligible for replacement or store credit.

05What to expect on arrival

Predatory mites, beneficial insects, and nematodes are living organisms, and a successful release depends on conditions both during transit and after delivery. The Live Delivery Guarantee covers arrival condition; the points below cover what’s reasonable to expect once the package is in your hands.

What a healthy arrival looks like:
  • —Most predatory mites are too small to pick out by eye, and that’s normal. A successful shipment won’t necessarily show visible movement on the carrier material — pest reduction over the following days and weeks is the true indicator of success.
  • —Sachets contain mostly eggs and immature stages, with adults emerging slowly through the pinhole over 4–6 weeks. You shouldn’t expect to see large numbers of mites on or around the sachet at any point.
  • —Green Lacewing larvae arrive as incubated eggs and typically hatch within 24–48 hours of delivery. Cold transit can delay hatch by 1–2 days. Both Lacewing Larvae and Lacewing Eggs produce 1mm translucent larvae that are difficult to see without magnification.
  • —Ice packs always arrive warm, and that’s expected. The pack is there for humidity rather than cooling: as it melts it raises the moisture around the organisms, which is what they need, and a cold box does them more harm than a warm one. Some orders ship without a pack, and that is normal too — it says nothing about the temperature along the route, which we do not measure per parcel.
Post-delivery handling is the customer’s responsibility:
  • —Release contents promptly on arrival. Packages held unopened for more than 72 hours after delivery are not covered by the Live Delivery Guarantee.
  • —Don’t leave packages in direct sun, parked vehicles, unheated garages, or other temperature-extreme locations after delivery.
  • —Open and inspect the package as soon as possible after delivery so any issues can be reported within the 72-hour window.

A note on storage after delivery

Once your order arrives healthy, what happens next is in your hands. The Live Delivery Guarantee covers the condition of your order on arrival — it does not cover what happens after you take possession. If you choose to store organisms rather than release them on arrival, you do so at your own risk, regardless of how carefully you follow our storage guidance.

Our storage and handling instructions are provided as a courtesy to help you preserve product you’ve chosen to hold. They are best-effort guidance, not a guarantee of viability, and following them does not extend, modify, or reset the Live Delivery Guarantee or its 72-hour claim window. Beneficial organisms are perishable and time-sensitive; the longer they’re held after delivery, the more their condition depends on factors entirely within the customer’s control. FGMN cannot assess, verify, or assume liability for storage conditions in a customer’s home, and is therefore unable to cover organisms that decline after a healthy arrival due to storage, delayed release, or handling after delivery.

Effectiveness depends on correct application:

Beneficial organisms are species-specific. The right predator for your pest, life stage, plant type, and environmental conditions determines whether a release will succeed. We provide a matchmaking quiz, species-specific product pages, and IPM resources to help you choose correctly. Sachets are designed for prevention and ongoing maintenance; treatment bottles and bulk releases are designed for active infestations — these are not interchangeable.

If a release isn’t producing the results you expected, reach out — we’ll help you understand what’s happening and how to course-correct. We’re not able to replace or issue store credit when an organism that arrived healthy subsequently fails to control a pest due to factors outside our control, including but not limited to: incorrect species selection for the target pest, mismatched environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, light), pesticide or fungicide residue on plants, presence of ants or other interfering insects, plant health and condition, application method, or delayed release after delivery. Most of these are solvable with a quick consultation.

Photo and video documentation:

For sachets, treatment bottles, beneficial insects, and lacewing products, we may request photos or short video to evaluate a claim. For mites and nematodes shipped on carrier material, we recognize that visible documentation is often not possible and won’t require it — but we will ask about your release method, environment, and target pest in order to support a claim.

06If your order arrives off

If you’re concerned about how your order arrived — it feels warm, looks damaged, or something seems wrong — you don’t need to diagnose anything yourself. Photograph the item and packaging, email us within 72 hours of delivery, and our team will assess it and resolve it. Assessing condition is our job, not yours.

One thing worth knowing: organisms slowed by cold transit often look inactive at first and perk up once they reach room temperature. Sluggish is not the same as non-viable. If something looks off, reach out and let us take a look rather than trying to judge it under a hand lens.

07Replacements & store credit

When a claim qualifies under the Live Delivery Guarantee, we offer one replacement shipment of the affected product at no additional cost, or store credit toward a future order. The choice between replacement and credit is at FGMN’s discretion based on product availability, season, and shipping conditions.

  • —One reship per affected order. If a replacement shipment is sent and a subsequent issue arises, additional resolution is handled case-by-case and is not guaranteed.
  • —Replacements ship on our standard free service. If you would rather have it overnight, you can choose that when you pick your replacement — we email an invoice for the overnight shipping, and the box goes out on the next shipping day once that is paid. The organisms are still covered by the guarantee and cost you nothing; the invoice is only the difference in shipping speed.
  • —Store credit is issued as a code redeemable on a future FGMN order. Store credit cannot be converted to cash, refunded to the original payment method, or transferred to another customer.
  • —All claims for orders placed on fgmnnursery.com must be submitted by email to info@fgmnnursery.com. Claims for orders placed on PalmStreet must be submitted through PalmStreet — we’re unable to process PalmStreet order claims by email, social media, or text message.

08Shipping losses

We cover shipping until the carrier records a delivery. If your order is lost in transit, stalled in the carrier network, or simply never turns up, that one is ours. There’s no add-on to buy and nothing to opt into — it’s how every order ships.

A parcel counts as lost when there’s no delivery scan on it and it’s more than seven days past the carrier’s estimated delivery date. Parcels do turn up late more often than people expect, which is what the seven days are for. Once past it, tell us and choose either a replacement or store credit for the full value of the goods.

Once the carrier records a delivery, it becomes a carrier claim. Past that scan there’s no way for us or for you to tell a parcel that went missing after it was dropped from one that’s somewhere in the house, so it goes through the carrier’s process instead. Claims are filed by the shipper rather than the recipient, so we open it on our end — you don’t have to do anything — and we come back to you as soon as they respond. Carrier claims usually take a few weeks, and the carrier decides the outcome, not us.

Deliveries the carrier couldn’t complete are a different thing again. If a parcel is refused, undeliverable, or returned because the address on the order couldn’t be delivered to, the parcel is accounted for rather than lost, and that sits outside what we cover.

Report it within 14 days of the ship date. The clock starts at the ship date shown in your tracking notification. Past 14 days carriers stop accepting claims, and so do we.

Where to report it: fgmnnursery.com/where-is-my-order — give the order number and the delivery ZIP, and it will read the tracking and tell you where you stand straight away.

09Carrier damage claims

All UPS and FedEx shipments are sent insured by the carrier. If a parcel arrives visibly damaged, tell us within 14 days of the ship date and we’ll open the carrier claim — those are filed by the shipper, so it’s ours to file. If what arrived is live insects in poor condition rather than a crushed box, that’s the Live Delivery Guarantee rather than a carrier claim, and it moves a great deal faster — email info@fgmnnursery.com with your order number.

To file a carrier claim, the carrier requires documentation from the recipient, including:
  • —Clear photos of the damaged item
  • —Photos of the internal packing materials
  • —Photos of the outer box and shipping label

This takes extra time, but it’s required by the carrier in order for the claim to be reviewed. Carrier claims can take several weeks to resolve, and the outcome is the carrier’s decision rather than ours.

10Returned packages

Packages that are returned to FGMN for any reason — refused delivery, return-to-sender, unclaimed at a carrier facility, undeliverable address, or carrier return following failed delivery attempts — are not covered by the Live Delivery Guarantee or by our shipping coverage, and are not eligible for replacement or store credit.

Living organisms and plants can’t survive the extended transit and temperature exposure of a return trip. If a returned package arrives back at FGMN in a state that permits reshipment, a new shipping charge will apply and a healthy arrival can’t be guaranteed on the second attempt.

11Seasonal packing

What goes in the box changes with the season rather than with the forecast for any particular route.

In the depths of winter: live plants get a 96-hour heat pack at no additional cost. Beneficials never do. A heat pack dries out the box, and dry air is hard on them.

In the warm months: we add insulation and an ice pack. The pack isn’t there to chill the box — as it melts it raises the humidity around the organisms, which is what they need. It always arrives warm, and the box will feel warm too; a cold box does them more harm than a warm one.

While we take every reasonable precaution, we can’t assume liability for damage caused by prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures or carrier delays beyond our control.