Ordering from Surreal Succulents

After You Place an Order

Once your order is confirmed, you'll receive an email with your order details itemized, followed by a tracking number when your plants are on the way. Our team carefully selects the biggest, healthiest succulents for you—most of which range between 6–10 cm in diameter. To ensure safe delivery, we ship most of them bare-root, which allows us to give each plant a thorough health check before packing. Some may come with soil to preserve the plant.

Single-use plastic free

We ship our succulents with minimal impact to the environment by using the following:

  • Paper tape, rather than plastic tape
  • Newspaper padding for your succulents
  • A fragile stamp, rather than plastic wrap

Why we ship our plants without pots and soil

Every succulent we send travels bare-root. We lift the plant out of its pot, gently clean the compost away from the roots, wrap and label it, and send it on its own without soil or a pot.

It catches people out the first time, so it is worth explaining properly. This is not us cutting corners. It is genuinely the best way to get a succulent to you in good health, and it is how growers and nurseries have moved succulents around the world for decades.

As they store water in their leaves, they can survive for many weeks without the need of soil. Some plants are the exception and will arrive with a little compost still around the roots, where that is what keeps them happiest on the journey.

Pictured: Echeveria 'Zestar'

The reasons in full

Soil and a sealed box are a bad combination. A plant in transit spends several days in the dark with no airflow. Damp compost pressed against the roots in those conditions is exactly how rot and fungal problems start, and a succulent that leaves us in perfect health can arrive soft and failing. Clean, dry roots travel safely.

Succulents are built to cope with it. The water they store in their leaves is what lets them survive drought in the wild, and that same adaptation means a few weeks out of soil does them no harm at all. Your plant is not going hungry on the journey.

We can see the roots before we send them. Lifting a plant out of its pot means we get a proper look at the root system. If there is any sign of rot, pests, or vine weevil larvae hiding down in the compost, we find it here rather than posting it to you. You get a plant we have genuinely inspected.

Loose compost wrecks a parcel. Soil does not stay where you put it. By the time a box has been through the postal network it has been tipped, stacked, and dropped, and compost that started in a pot ends up through the plants and the packaging. Bare-root plants arrive clean and undamaged, in a box you can actually unpack.

It keeps your postage down. Compost is heavy, and most of that weight is water. Taking it out means the parcel weighs a fraction of what it otherwise would, which keeps postage sensible and lets you order more plants for the same delivery cost.

Overseas orders have no other option. Plants leaving the country have to be clean and free of soil before they can be inspected and certified, so bare-root is a requirement rather than a preference. There is more about that on our international shipping page.

Your plant settles into your conditions from day one. Roots that establish in your compost, in your light, in your home adapt to it straight away, rather than being moved on from a nursery mix a few weeks after they arrive.

What this means for you

Unpack your plants as soon as they arrive and pot them into fresh free-draining compost. Keep them somewhere shaded and hold off watering for the first week or so, which lets any roots knocked about in handling seal and settle rather than sitting wet. After that they are away, and before long you will not be able to tell the difference between a plant that travelled bare-root and one that never left the nursery.

Carefully nested

We prepare a newspaper page in the box into a nest formation, then carefully place your bare-rooted, individually-labelled and wrapped succulents into this nest. We then place another newspaper page on top to secure them in place.

Care note included

A care note is included with your order. This short guide will aid you for the first few weeks to get your plant rooted and established, healthily and happily.

After Your Succulents Arrive

Once your new plant babies arrive to their new home, we recommend potting them in 9 cm pots with well-draining soil. Keep them in a shaded spot for 7–10 days to help them settle in and acclimate to their new environment. After that, they’re ready to thrive wherever you choose to display them!

Enjoy your succulents! 🌱✨

General Succulent Care Guide