Why can't we send plants to Northern Ireland?
As much as we would like to, it is not possible to send plants to Northern Ireland (or Europe) since Brexit. We don't like it, we didn't vote for it, but there is nothing we can do about it!
Here's why:
The current rules under the 'Windsor Agreement' allow plants to be sent from nurseries in Britain to home addresses in N.I. (note these rules are different from business to business movements), provided the following rules are followed:
1. All plants must have a phytosanitary certificate provided by APHA (part of DEFRA). At the time of writing this costs £25.52. So each parcel immediately costs £25 on top of our other costs.
2. As a nursery selling plants via 'distance selling', we are already registered with APHA to issue Plant Passports, which are required for all distance selling of plants. These are not the same as phytosanitary certificates and do not cost anything to issue as we do that ourselves. However, as part of this process, we have to pay for annual inspections of the plants at the nursery and also pay for an annual audit of our records. That's just for sending plants (from our nursery in England) to addresses in England, Scotland and Wales. If we were also sending to N.I. we would have to pay for more regular inspections and potentially laboratory testing too.
As can be seen, it is no longer financially viable for small nurseries to send plants to Northern Ireland. In fact, we are not aware of any nurseries, small or large, that are currently doing so.
This information was updated in February 2024 after speaking again to our local APHA Plant Inspector to ensure that we have the most up-to-date information.
