Questions and answers
If your question is not here, call us on (407) 439-5000 or email info@usatree.com. A real person answers both.
About USA Tree
What do you sell?
Mostly things you can eat. Fruit trees, berries, bananas, perennial greens, herbs and edible roots, every one of them chosen because it crops reliably in a warm climate. That is what we grow and what we know, and we would rather do one thing properly than carry a bit of everything.
A good number of those are worth growing for what is in them as much as for the taste: moringa for its protein-rich leaves, turmeric and ginger for the roots, blueberries, and the perennial greens that keep cutting through a Florida summer. Picked ripe in your own garden, none of it has spent a week in a lorry losing its vitamins first.
We also carry houseplants, which are grown by a specialist in another state and shipped to you direct from there rather than coming from our nursery. They are ornamental, not edible. Those listings say so on the page.
Do you sell citrus?
Yes. We buy it finished from certified Florida nurseries, never propagate it ourselves, and every tree carries a tag naming its rootstock, its variety and the Florida Department of Agriculture regulated nursery that grew it.
The one catch is that citrus does not leave Florida. Quarantine rules keep it in the state, so we sell it in person at the nursery or the market, or deliver it locally, and we do not ship it. If you are out of state we are the wrong nursery for citrus, and we will say so rather than sell you something else.
Where do your plants come from?
Three places, and we would rather tell you than let you assume. Much of what we sell arrives here young and spends three months to a year on our growing ground near Eustis, moving into a bigger pot and living through a Central Florida season before we offer it. Some we buy finished from wholesale growers around us, the same growers who supply garden centres across the state.
Every edible plant we sell comes from one of those two, so it was grown in Central Florida, in this soil and this weather. A tree that has already taken a summer and a winter here will not sulk when you plant it in the same one.
The houseplants are the third, and they are different in every way that matters. They are grown by a specialist in another state and shipped to you direct from there, so they never pass through our nursery, we never see them, and they are not covered by our Florida registration. They cannot be collected or delivered locally either. Those listings say all of that before you choose a size.
Are you licensed?
Yes. We are a nursery registered with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, registration 48028222, which means the growing ground is inspected and the stock we hold carries the certification the state requires. You can see the certificate on our home page.
That registration covers our own nursery, which is the right thing for it to cover and worth being exact about. A houseplant shipped direct from our partner is certified by the nursery that grew it, under its own state's inspection regime, not by us.
Buying from us
Can I come and see the plants?
Please do. We sell in person from a booth at Renninger's Flea Market, Mount Dora, open Saturday and Sunday, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. Bring a photo of your spot and rough measurements and we will tell you honestly what will work in it, including when the answer is nothing we stock.
Can I order online and collect?
Yes, and it is usually the best option if you are nearby. Pay online, we set the order aside, and you collect at the stand during opening hours. Nothing is boxed, so you get a larger plant for the same money.
Can I collect from the nursery instead?
Yes, on weekdays. The nursery is at 37601 Burhans Road, Eustis, open Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Visits to the nursery are by appointment: call or text us on (407) 439-5000 to arrange a time. It is a working nursery rather than a garden centre, so telling us what you are after when you arrange the visit means we can have it pulled and ready. At weekends come to Booth J57 at Renninger's Flea Market instead, where there is no gate, no appointment and no need to call.
Do you deliver locally?
Yes, around Eustis, Mount Dora, Tavares and Umatilla. Local delivery is the only way to get our largest sizes home if you cannot carry them, because a fifteen gallon tree cannot be boxed for a carrier without damaging it. The checkout will tell you whether your ZIP code is in range.
Shipping
Do you ship?
Within Florida, and not quite yet. We are finishing the certification that Florida requires on every package of nursery stock, and we would rather post nothing than post something we are not licensed to send. Pickup and local delivery are available now. If you would like to know when shipping opens, email info@usatree.com and we will tell you.
Do you ship outside Florida?
No. Every state writes its own rules about which plants may cross its border and under what paperwork, on top of the federal ones, and meeting all of them properly is a bigger undertaking than it looks. We would rather do one state well than fifty badly, so for now we sell to Florida only.
How will shipping be priced?
At what it actually costs. We ask the carriers for a live quote on the exact boxes your order needs and show you the choices, rather than applying a flat fee that is wrong in both directions. Live plants are bulky, and carriers charge on the space a box occupies as much as its weight, so a tree costs meaningfully more to send than its weight suggests.
Which carriers, and how fast?
FedEx and USPS, and only services that arrive within about three days. We will not offer you a cheaper option that leaves a living plant in a dark box for a week, because it arrives dead and neither of us wants that conversation.
Will everything be shipped in a pot?
Where we can, we plan to ship bare-root instead, with the roots washed clean and packed damp. It sounds worse and is usually better: the plant is lighter, the box is smaller, and it costs you less to send.
Are there places you cannot ship to?
Anywhere outside Florida. The checkout works this out from your address and tells you before you pay, rather than after.
Will my order arrive in one box?
Probably not, if you order more than one plant. A potted tree is an awkward shape that does not nest with another, so each usually travels in its own carton. The price you see at checkout accounts for that.
Will I get a tracking number?
Yes, by email, as soon as the box leaves us.
When your plants arrive
What should I do first?
Open the box the day it lands, even if you cannot plant for a while. Take off the wrapping, put the plant somewhere bright but out of hard afternoon sun for a few days, and water it. That is the whole list.
It looks miserable. Is it dying?
Almost certainly not. A plant that has spent two days in a dark box will often droop, drop a few leaves or look yellow around the edges. It has pulled its energy back into the roots, which is exactly what it should do. Water it properly and give it two or three weeks; new growth is the sign to watch for, not the state of the leaves it travelled with.
Should I repot it straight away?
No. Leave it in the pot it arrived in for a few weeks at least. It has enough to deal with. When you do move it up, go one container size at a time rather than straight into something enormous, and make sure whatever you use has drainage holes.
When can I plant it in the ground?
Once the risk of frost has passed for the year, which in our part of Florida is most of the time but not all of it. Do not plant deeper than it sat in the pot, which is the single most common way a young tree is killed by kindness. Staking a new tree is worth the ten minutes: it helps the trunk stiffen and stops anyone mowing it off at the ankles.
Why does it not look like the photograph?
Because it is alive and the photograph is not. Height, branching, leaf count and whether anything is in flower vary between one plant and the next and across the season. Our photographs show what the variety looks like, not the individual specimen you will receive. Where a listing gives a size, that is what we hold ourselves to.
Will it be fruiting when it arrives?
Usually not, and you should be suspicious of anyone promising otherwise. Fruit trees crop when they are ready and in their own season, and a deciduous tree in winter will arrive bare and look dead. Each listing tells you roughly how long to expect to wait.
If something goes wrong
My plant arrived damaged.
Tell us within three days, with photographs of the plant and the box it came in. The box matters: it tells us whether the problem happened in our packing or on the truck, and it is how we get better at this. We will either help you save the plant, replace it, or refund you.
Cosmetic damage from transit is a different thing from a plant that will not recover. Bruised or torn leaves are not covered, because the plant grows those back. A broken graft or a root ball that arrives dry and dead is covered.
Do you guarantee it will grow?
We guarantee it reaches you alive and undamaged. We cannot guarantee what happens afterwards, because that involves your soil, your watering, your rabbits and your weather, none of which we control. What we will do is answer questions for as long as you have them. Send a photograph and we will tell you what we think.
Can I return a plant I changed my mind about?
No. Live plants are perishable and we cannot resell one that has spent a week somewhere else. If you are unsure which variety suits you, ask before you buy, and if we think you are about to buy the wrong thing we will say so.
Can I change or cancel my order?
If it has not been packed, yes. Call or email as soon as you can. Once a plant is boxed, or set aside for collection, we cannot unpick it. Wrong address is the urgent one, so tell us immediately.
Still stuck?
Call (407) 439-5000 or email info@usatree.com. If you are local, find Booth J57 at Renninger's Flea Market during opening hours and bring the plant with you.