Returns
A live plant cannot be sent back; merch can. Here is what is covered on each, and what is not.
1. Live plants cannot come back. Once a cactus has been through the post it cannot be sold again, so Mysterious Yard LLC takes no change-of-mind return on a live plant after the box has gone out. That is not meanness, it is the plant: a cutting that has spent three days in a dark box is not the cutting the next person is going to buy.
What you get instead is a guarantee about the state it arrives in, and that is section 2. This rule is on this page, on the Shipping & care page, and linked from your cart before you pay, so nobody meets it for the first time afterwards.
Merch is a different thing and can come back. Its section is further down this page.
2. The 48-hour arrival guarantee. Open the box the day it lands. If a plant is dead or destroyed on arrival, tell me within 48 hours of delivery and send photographs: the plant as it came out of the box, the box itself, and the packing around it.
The way to do that is your order page — there is more about it further down this page — and the form there takes the photographs directly, so a claim never depends on an email reaching me.
Frozen, cooked, crushed, snapped through or rotted on arrival gets a replacement where I have one, or a full refund. Which of the two is my call and I will tell you why. Nothing has to be posted back to me.
If you miss the 48 hours, send it anyway. The claim is still recorded and I still read it. The window is what I promise to honour; it is not a door I slam.
3. What is covered, and what is not. Covered: tissue that is soft, blackened, sour-smelling or collapsed when the box is opened; a cutting snapped through in transit; frost damage.
Not covered: scuffs, spines lost in transit, corking, sun-scarring, mild dehydration, or a healthy cutting that later failed to root. Rooting happens in your care, over weeks, in your light and your mix, and it is not something I can stand behind from here. The rooting guide on the Shipping & care page is the help I can give instead, and I will answer questions about a plant that is sulking for as long as you want to keep asking.
Nothing in this section takes away a right California law gives you that a seller is not allowed to take away.
4. Weather holds. A box that freezes on the way, or one that cooks, ruins the plant inside it. When the forecast where the box is going is below roughly 35°F or above 100°F, I do not post it. I hold it here until the run is safe and email you the date.
Where I can, you are told before you pay rather than after: give the cart the destination ZIP and the shop reads the forecast there, stops at Checkout, shows you the temperature it read, and lets you decide whether to order at all. That box is optional and blank never stops a sale, so if you leave it out there is nowhere for the check to look.
If a hold happens after you have paid — the ZIP was blank, or the forecast turned after you ordered — you get an email with a new date and a choice: wait for it, or cancel for a full refund. An order on hold has not had a label printed, so section 5 applies to it in full. A hold never costs you anything, and it never shortens the guarantee in section 2, which runs from the day the box is delivered rather than the day you ordered.
5. Cancelling before it ships. Say so before the label is printed and the order is cancelled and refunded in full — no questions, no restocking fee. An order sitting on a weather hold has not been posted, so it is always still cancellable.
6. The wrong plant. My mistake, entirely my problem. The right plant goes out and I cover the postage both ways. If you would rather just have your money back, say so and that is fine too.
7. Lost, late or undeliverable. Once the box is moving it is in the carrier's hands, but it is still my problem until it reaches you. I chase delays with the carrier. A parcel the carrier confirms as lost is replaced or refunded — you do not have to fight the post office on my behalf.
A box that comes back to me as undeliverable because the address was wrong can go out again once you give me the right one, at the cost of the second postage.
8. Refunds. Refunds go back the way you paid, within 5 business days of a claim being agreed and usually the same day.
A cancelled order is refunded in full, postage included. Where a whole order arrives dead, the postage comes back too. Where one plant out of several is the problem, the refund is that plant, since the box travelled anyway.
9. Merch, and anything I have not covered. The merch rules are in their own section below, because a shirt and a cactus are not the same promise and should not pretend to be.
Anything else: the contact page, linked in the footer of every page. I answer my own messages.
Making an arrival claim
Open your order page — your order number and the email address you used at checkout are enough, there is no account to make — and the claim form is on it. It takes the photographs directly, so nothing depends on an email reaching me, and it gives you a page you can come back to that shows exactly where the claim has got to.
The photographs are kept as evidence on the claim and are never published anywhere on this site. Each one is re-encoded the moment it arrives, which removes the location and camera data your phone attaches — I never see where you live.
Merch
Merch is not a live plant, so none of the arrival rules above apply to it — there is nothing to keep alive and nothing that needs photographing on the day it lands.
If a shirt or a print turns up faulty, misprinted, or simply not what you ordered, tell me on the contact page, linked in the footer of every page, and I will put it right: replaced or refunded, whichever you would rather. That is on me and the return postage is on me too.
If you have just changed your mind, an unworn, unwashed merch item can come back within 30 days and the return postage is yours. That covers the whole shelf — none of it is made to order, so there is nothing here that cannot come back.