Accessibility

We build to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA, published by the World Wide Web Consortium. WCAG 2.1 AA is also the benchmark most commonly applied to retail websites in the United States under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Our conformance status is partially conformant: most of the site meets the standard, and some parts do not yet. We do not claim full conformance, because claiming it would be easy and checking it honestly is not.

These are measures already built into the site, not aspirations:

• A skip link at the top of every page that jumps straight past the header and category navigation to the main content.
• A visible focus outline on every interactive element. Focus styling is set once, globally, and is never removed anywhere in the design.
• Full keyboard operation: every control, filter, dialog, gallery and form can be reached and used without a mouse.
• Motion respects your system setting. With reduce motion enabled, animations, transitions and smooth scrolling are cut to effectively nothing.
• Every form control has a real, programmatically associated label, including the ones whose label is visually hidden. Hints and error messages are wired to their input, so a screen reader announces them.
• Live regions announce the things that change without a page load: cart totals, filter and search result counts, product image changes, and stock and wishlist confirmations.
• Semantic headings, landmark regions and labeled navigation, so a screen reader user can move by heading or region rather than reading everything.
• Text alternatives for meaningful images, with decorative images hidden from assistive technology rather than described.
• Color is never the only way information is conveyed, and color choices are made against a fixed token palette designed for contrast at Level AA.
• The layout reflows to narrow screens and to 200% browser zoom without loss of content or horizontal scrolling.
• Prices, totals and counts are marked up as text, never baked into images.

Listing these is more useful than not listing them:

• Product photography comes from our growers, and alternative text for it is currently generic in places rather than describing the individual image.
• Payment is completed on a page hosted by Stripe, our payment processor. Its accessibility is governed by Stripe and is outside our control, though we monitor it.
• Some longer catalog tables and filter combinations have not yet been tested end to end with every major screen reader and browser pairing.
• We have not commissioned an independent third-party accessibility audit. When we do, we will say so here and publish what it found.

If you hit a barrier that is not on this list, we would rather hear about it than not. See section 5.

You do not have to use this website to buy from us.

IF ANY PART OF THIS SITE PREVENTS YOU FROM BROWSING, CHOOSING OR ORDERING, CONTACT US AND A PERSON WILL TAKE YOUR ORDER DIRECTLY. THEY WILL DESCRIBE THE PLANTS, CHECK YOUR DELIVERY AREA, ANSWER HORTICULTURAL QUESTIONS AND PLACE THE ORDER FOR YOU. YOU GET THE SAME CATALOG, THE SAME PRICES, THE SAME PROMOTIONS AND THE SAME LIVE ARRIVAL GUARANTEE. THERE IS NO SURCHARGE FOR ORDERING THIS WAY.

The same applies to anything else the site is used for: checking an order, changing a delivery date, making a guarantee claim, applying for a trade account, or asking us to delete your data.

Accessibility feedback goes to a person, not a form queue. Tell us what you were trying to do, and we will fix it or find you another way to do it.

If you can, include the page address, what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and the browser, operating system and assistive technology you were using. Any of that helps; none of it is required.

We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports within five business days, tell you what we found, and give you a way to complete what you were doing in the meantime.

Accessibility is checked while each surface is built rather than audited afterwards: keyboard-only walkthroughs of the buying path, browser zoom to 200%, and a design-token page that exists precisely so contrast and focus states can be reviewed in one place rather than hunted through components.

This statement is reviewed when the site changes materially, and the effective date at the top moves when it does. If something on this page is no longer true, tell us and we will correct it.