FAQs

Delivery

All orders will incur a single P&P charge of £6.95. Surcharges may apply to outlying Scottish Highlands and Islands and Channel Islands. Surcharged postcodes include - but are not limited to - the following: AB, DD8-11, GY, HS, IM, IV, JE, KA27-28, KW, PA20-80, PH19-50, TR21-25, ZE. Sorry, but we are currently unable to deliver to Northern Ireland or Europe.

Potted Rose orders are shipped in 2 working days all year round. Bare root roses are only shipped between November and March - outside those times so you can Pre-Order them for advance delivery from the November following.

On shipment of your Order if you leave your email or mobile, you will receive a Shipping Confirmation email, so you can Track where your parcel is, and make changes if you need to.

No signature is required on delivery, so you don't have to wait in. You can always advise us at point of order if there is somewhere safe to leave your plants.

If your order includes bulky composts or mulches, these will be shipped separately, due to their weight.

On the rare occasions things don't go entirely to plan with couriers, please let our Customer Services Team know by calling us on standard rate number 0333 210 1044 or email us on [email protected]

Returning an Item

Please Contact Us - do not send items back with the courier. If you wish to return an item which is damaged or doesn't meet your expectations in another way, please get in touch with our Customer Service team via our Contact Us page - we will be more than happy to resolve your query.

If you have received your order and you've changed your mind, don't like it, or it is no longer required, please return to:

HARKNESS RETURNS
Long Lane Nursery
Long Lane
Gedney Hill
Spalding
Lincolnshire
PE12 0PP

Please make sure you include the delivery note or your full name and address inside the parcel so we know its from you. A refund for the returned items will be issued only on safe receipt of the goods. Please note, we do not offer a free returns service and the means of returning items should be arranged by you. We recommend you use a tracked courier service.

Under no circumstances should you send items back with the delivery courier or refuse delivery, as we cannot guarantee to receive items back - in which case your request for a refund may be denied.

How do my Roses arrive?

Our Bare Root Roses are field grown, in the traditional way that rose plants have been grown for generations. All our rose plants are individually grafted onto a root stock, and have 20 months growing time in the field from planting to lifting from the field. Once they are dormant in the Autumn, they can be lifted and cold-stored til Spring. We deliver bare root roses from early November til March, and they can be planted outside any time I this period.

The term Bare Root refers to the roots of the plant, which are 'Bare' as in having no soil. This is the way most of the plants that we have sold over the last 135 years have been supplied. It is a tried, tested and successful way of moving plants from the nursery to the garden while they are in a state of dormancy.

Our Pot Grown Roses are growing in large 5 litre pots in compost specially formulated for roses, fed by slow-release fertiliser that will last the current season, and are available pretty much all year round.
The amount of growth on Potted roses will vary at different times of year, depending on when they are potted.
Pot grown roses will be Fresh potted from November to February, so are not fully rooted through.
They will have new shoots beginning in March and April.
They will be in leaf and then buds May and June.
They will be in flower June and July.
From August onwards they may be trimmed back, ready to plant and burst back into life the next season.
We try to stagger the flowering time so that we can make deliveries in bloom throughout the Summer from Mid June to late September, but nature (and unpredictable demand from customers) make it difficult to get this 100% right. In Summer if the plants are not in flower they will be coming into bud and be in flower in your garden shortly.

How do I look after my Roses?

Check out our blog for hints and tips on pruning and maintenance of your roses.

We supply a range of mulches, composts, and rose care products to help you get the best results out of your Rose bushes.

What do the Star Ratings indicate?

To help you select your favourites, we give each rose a Star Rating. The performance of any rose will vary from place to place and from year to year with different amounts of Sun, Wind, Rain and Frost. It is one of the beauties of growing plants, every year is different bringing new challenges and allowing us the pleasure of learning something every year. As such, the Star Ratings are a guide to performance.

5 Star Rose:
This is a rose that in our experience is reliable over a wide range of conditions, growing well with strength, health and vigour, producing plentiful flowers and a variety that in the hands of anovice will be easy to grow.

4 Star Rose:
Just not good in all respects as their 5 Star cousins. They may have a wonderful and unusual colour, but not be quite as healthy or maybe not so tolerant of a windy site. They will still perform very well and have many good points, but they are the cheeky naughty child of the family, full of mischief and occasionally crossing the line making extra work for us gardeners to care for them.

3 Star Rose:
These will have a really outstanding feature, often a wonderful perfume or stunning flowers, but may not be amazing in all facets. This one feature makes them very desirable, but they may be a little more difficult to grow and will be more susceptible to disease.

2 and 1 Star:
We tend to have very few of these in our range, as they are not without their challenges, but may have haunting beauty, or it may be fleeting. They may grow well, but flower for a short period only.

What do the Scent Ratings indicate?

This is always a fun part of enjoying the rose. Perfume, like so much in nature, is not consistent, so putting a numeric value on it is fraught with difficulties! Some of the variations are caused by temperature, sunlight and humidity. Wind and rain will dull the scent as well. Some flowers have a stronger perfume during the period that the flower is at its most fertile and ready to accept pollen, thus attracting the pollinating insects at the right time. They are clever things, these plants.

We rate the perfume on a 1 to 10 scale. The premise is simple, the higher the number the stronger the perfume. The only problem with this simplicity is that as people we all have different noses and different sensitivities, so any two or three people may put the flowers in a different order!

Please take the Scent Ratings as a guide. There are so many different types of scent, Rose, Fruit, Spice, Myrrh, Citronella, Musk and many more found in the rose. The strongest may not always be the nicest, it is impossible not to include some subjectivity in the ratings.

Scent Ratings: - Imagine them on a sliding scale with the reference points shown below:

Our Lifetime Guarantee

As a team of keen horticulturalists with over 100 years' experience, we are totally committed to making sure you receive great quality products, delivered in a timely way and great value for money - all supported by the service you deserve. When you buy Roses from us, we genuinely want you to be delighted with them - which is why we are happy to provide you with our complete Double Satisfaction Guarantee.

All our products are supplied with a complete and unconditional guarantee for the first 30 days after you receive them, which is in addition to your statutory rights. However, to give you even more assurance, thereafter we are delighted to provide you with our Lifetime Guarantee on all our Roses - which means just that!

" If at any time your Rose does not thrive, let us know and we will send you a direct replacement FREE OF CHARGE, without question - all we ask is that you pay for the current standard Postage, Packing and Insurance for the item. "

We will soon be sending you the latest deals and gardening information. Your 5% discount code should be in your inbox shortly (please check your spam folder if it's not there in the next 5 minutes).

Enjoy shopping with us at Harkness Roses

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