Policies & FAQ

We are open seasonally March-June and again in September-October. We also open for special events throughout the year. Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date! Our current hours are always listed on our homepage. Holidays do not affect our hours of operation. We are open rain or shine with the exception of extreme weather or flooding. Please check our Facebook or Instagram for last-minute weather updates.

We'd love to be open for a longer retail season! However, because we grow over 90% of our own plants, we don't have the space or staffing capabilities to balance our production demands with being open year-round. Summer and winter are critical for sanitation, propagation, sowing, and transplant, and we need all hands on deck for that work. We are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays during our spring season so that we can catch up on watering, plant care, tidying, restock, and mass moving of plants (mainly because we don't ship in finished product like our competitors). Most folks seem to prefer that we are open both weekend days, so our critical 'catch-up time' remains Mondays and Tuesdays.

We want our customers to be happy with their Painters purchases. If you have an issue with a Painters plant, please give us a call or email us with a description of the problem (photos are encouraged!). If the issue is something that can likely be fixed, we will advise accordingly. Plant Warranty: As of 2024, our policy is that if you purchase a shrub, tree, or dormant perennial before it has leafed out, you are buying at your own risk, and it is not covered by warranty. This should help prevent failures with plants that may not have survived the prior winter. Regarding failures among plants that have emerged from dormancy, we typically offer an exchange/Painters credit of equal value if the plant has died within the calendar year of purchase. If a plant is showing signs of significant decline or appears to be dying, please contact us promptly with details of the issue. Exceptions to the warranty: Exchanges will not be honored if the plant was obviously neglected (e.g., shows signs of not getting enough water or being damaged from cold), or if it shows signs of pest or disease acquired after purchase. (We can typically identify whether pest damage is due to naturally occurring insects or mammals vs. disease/pests found in greenhouses). Exchanges are not able to be honored for plants that fail to overwinter, as there may be weather-related losses regardless of how healthy the plants were when purchased. We also do not offer refunds/exchanges on clearance or dormant plants.

We welcome leashed, quiet, well-behaved pets. Please monitor pets at all times--we have plants that can be toxic if ingested! If your pup has an accident and you’re unprepared, ask for a compostable baggie at checkout. If your pet is causing problems (e.g., loudly barking or showing aggressive behavior), we may ask you to remove it from the retail area. We want to maintain a peaceful and safe environment for all. Note: If you need water for your pup, please use the bathrooms (potable) rather than a hose, which may have fertilizer in it!

Yes! We have a point of sale and inventory management system, and one of the many benefits is that we can keep track of your customer rewards points. Once you earn 500 points in a season you will receive 10% off your future purchases for that calendar year (some exclusions may apply such as combining with other discounts or use during our clearance sale). Your rewards points will reset each January. How do you earn points? Get 1 point per $1 spent Keep an eye out for specials and events where you can earn double points Note that you do have to register your name with your orders to accrue points.

For ALL customers, once you spend $500, you qualify for 10% off all purchases for the rest of that calendar year. Click here to learn more about the rewards program. We offer a 10% military discount to all active duty, reserve, and retired military personnel (valid U.S. Military I.D. required at time of purchase). We also offer discounts to nonprofits--if you bring your 501(c) verification, we can offer you 10% off of your order and even may be able to donate some items also. We donate to up to 100 different nonprofits and charitable ventures each season--supporting our community is very important to us! At the end of the spring season, we have a nonprofit day where we invite qualified folks to come load up on our leftover plants for free. If you want to receive an invite to our nonprofit day, please send us an email with details about your not-for-profit organization or project.

We update our availability lists weekly when open. Note that even with weekly updates, our entire stock of a given item can disappear in a matter of hours during busy days; therefore, we recommend contacting us to double-check and coming out that same day if something particular is desired. (We are unfortunately not able to accommodate pre-orders or holds.) While we grow over 2,000 plant varieties each year, keep in mind that they may not all be available at the same time. We are proud to grow and sell the majority of our own plants, but this means we are somewhat limited by our planned inventory for the year, particularly with herbaceous perennials. Many annuals, veggies, and herbs are grown in multiple successive plantings, so we often have more that will be ready soon--just ask if you don't see something or if something is running low!

How we determine our pricing Like everyone else in business these days, our material costs have significantly increased. Our plants are priced not only based on materials, but also based on our goal to offer our staff regular wage increases to compete with the ever increasing cost of living. Additionally, a critical component for growers is the cost associated with care and space for each crop. A good example of this might be our perennial vines costing more than, say, an echinacea in the same pot size. Due to their nature, vines require significantly more care. Some of them take daily upkeep to make sure they aren't grabbing on to all of their neighbors; while echinacea are pretty good about staying in their lane. Why have some of your prices increased in 2023? We spent a lot of time in spring and summer of '23 assessing the data from our new inventory/POS system and looking at how much it cost us to grow each crop. We realized that we weren't pricing a lot of our crops--mostly perennials--in a way that would sustain Painters even in the short term, let alone in the long term. In some ways, we have worked against ourselves, because it's so important to us that gardening is accessible to everyone, and because we want to see ecologically important plants in as many yards as possible. We realize we need to be careful not to underprice ourselves so we can keep doing what we do. We're committed to you, our dedicated customers who keep returning, as well as to our employees who work so hard in challenging conditions to grow healthy plants. Our goal is to grow healthy plants; maintain our facility as a safe, attractive, and beautiful place; and provide excellent customer service.

We do not offer wholesale. We grow for a large base of faithful retail customers, so we aren't able to sell plants in mass quantities. All customers who sign up for the rewards program are able to receive a 10% discount once they accrue 500 points (roughly $500) for that year.

Our sales are determined weekly based on inventory. Sign up for our newsletter and keep an eye on social media if you want to receive updates on the latest sales and events. Items can sell out fast during our busy spring season--if you wait for a plant to go on sale, it might be gone. If there's something you have your heart set on, it may be best to grab it when you see it, rather than gamble on a markdown!

We unfortunately do not have the space or means to hold or deliver plants. All plants are sold directly on site--first come, first serve! We also do not have a landscaping department and are not able to design and plant pots or baskets to order; we simply don't have the resources. That said, we can usually help with basic design questions, and we do have some local landscapers we can recommend for large-scale design needs, as well as basic maintenance or planting work.

If you know your plant pests and are sure of identity (mealybugs, spider mites, or aphids being the most obvious), then please let us know if you spot any! If you are unsure, we can help identify, either in person or via photo, as you may actually be seeing a beneficial insect. We apply beneficials to many of our crops to help keep pests under control. We do our absolute best to regularly scout for and treat any pest or disease outbreaks, but it is near impossible to maintain a completely pest-free greenhouse using eco-friendly methods, particularly with such a huge range of crops being grown under the same roof over long periods. We are very concerned about pollinator safety (as well as human and pet safety), so we try to use the gentlest pest and disease treatments whenever possible. This means that sometimes we do have small outbreaks of pests; don't feel bad about informing us of a discovered mealybug--we want to know! (We also may have treated them and they may be in the process of dying off.) If you have a plant you've purchased and see pests, we can either offer an exchange, or, if only a couple pests are visible, guide you through safe treatment/eradication of them.

We can take back the plastic trays used to carry plants from Painters. However we cannot accept pots of any size, unfortunately. We aren't able to sterilize and reuse them efficiently and unfortunately have no better source for potentially recycling them than the average consumer. (Note that some pots and trays are made of mixed types of already recycled plastics and therefore cannot be recycled again. Check the bottoms for the plastic type/number to know if your local recycling center will take them). We are grateful that the company we purchase from uses mostly recycled plastics to make our pots and trays, but at some point those plastics break down too much and can't be reformed again to be useful.

We ask that all customers respect our no-smoking policy, including all areas of the property. While the policy was made in part for the protection and comfort of people, it is especially critical to the health of our plants. Tobacco and nicotine both have the potential to cause serious damage to plants, including the deadly Tobacco Mosaic Virus. We ask that everyone respect the need for us to protect our product, and if you have recently smoked, please avoid touching the plants (especially petunias and tomatoes, which are highly susceptible). This may seem extreme, but we once lost thousands of petunias to this virus, so it's no joke! We thank you for your understanding and compliance with this necessary Painters policy.

Most retail garden centers ship in fully mature plants from elsewhere, which means they have more freedom with their retail area and layout. It is a unique challenge to grow and maintain such a wide variety of plant crops in our limited space, and therefore much of our retail area is also our growing space. As a result, you may sometimes find aisles marked as off-limits or plants labeled ‘not ready for sale’ because they still need time to become fully rooted and ready for transplanting. We also have permanent stock and propagation aisles that are always off-limits; please respect the signage on these, as we want to keep them as clean as possible.

Sadly, no. But you can always check with Lowe's. 😁