Garden Nursery Store with Seasonal Availability

A custom availability plugin gives every product a season, a lead time and a dispatch rule. Bare-root lines open on the date lifting begins and close when the season ends, without anyone having to remember to switch them on or off. Potted lines carry the date they are expected back, so customers see when something will be ready rather than a blunt sold-out message.

Because availability is calculated rather than typed in, the shop never offers a plant it cannot send. That accuracy is what replaced most of the phone calls about stock.

• Availability windows per product
• Bare-root lines opening and closing by date
• Expected-back dates for potted stock

Instead of promising next-day delivery, the checkout asks customers to choose a dispatch week. Only weeks the nursery can meet are offered, taking into account each plant’s lead time, the season and any weekend or weather holds. A hedge order in November can be booked for a week when the customer will be home to plant it.

The chosen week is stored on the order, so the dispatch team plans lifting and packing week by week rather than reacting to a pile of urgent orders.

Plants need different handling from boxes of goods. Shipping zone rules choose the courier service and packaging per product, hold dispatch so nothing sits in a depot over a weekend, and pause shipments during heatwave holds. Large bare-root orders and small pot-grown plants can travel by different services in the same order.

Refunds for plants damaged in transit fell sharply after these dispatch rules went in, which protected both the nursery’s margin and its reputation.

Selling plants online carries a responsibility to help them survive. Every product links to planting and aftercare guides written by the nursery, and the relevant guides are included in the dispatch email so customers have them when the parcel arrives. Product schema helps those plant pages appear clearly in search.

Care content attached to products reduced the number of enquiries asking why a plant had died after delivery, and gave the nursery an expert voice that customers come back for.