My order was placed 4/28/2019. Nothing was backordered and no plants. Just insecticides. I emailed 5/4 for status I called 5/6 to complain and was told my order will be expedited and to expect it in two days 5/7 I got a response on my email saying "estimated shipping date is 05.09.19" 5/9 No shipping notice so I called and the person said I would not receive my order till mid May. I told them I no longer want anything to do with Garden's Alive and to stop shipment. Then they changed their response to say I will be getting my order in two days. I called them out and they tried to cover with more lies. VERY VERY unhappy with the service and support. I use to order from Gardens Alive all the time. NEVER AGAIN! read more

Don't even think about ordering from Gardens Alive. They via snail mail and you often can't track your package. Mine disappeared in the Bermuda triangle apparently and can't get even a peep back from them. At least I'm not out hundreds of dollars, only a couple dozen. No plants, no call back, don't make the same mistake. read more

Break's Bulbs is a scam. They gladly take your money before they have bulbs to sell or ship. They give optimistic delivery dates then push them out months without telling you. Now my bulbs will arrive after snow fall! Useless, never shop w them. Untrustworthy. read more

Gardens Alive (aka Breck's) will take forever to ship, and in the year 2022 are unable to send a bill through email. Placed an order for hellebores based through a paper order form sent to me in a Breck's catalog. The order was received by Breck's on 1/14/21 with estimated ship date of 5/14/21. Received email on 5/20/21 informing me that shipping date was delayed until 10/21/21. Order finally shipped on 9/22/21. Received email correspondence regarding order status but it never indicated any outstanding balance on the account. Breck's claims they sent bill through mail, which I never received as I'd moved away from the address in question by the time they sent it, and they never many any attempt to send any statement electronically. Instead of ever trying to call or email, they passed the account balance on to a debt collector. Will not be spending another cent with Breck's. They're at best misleading - and at worst it's a total scam that will show up long after promised, with all sorts of nasty surprised attached. read more

Awful. They ship everything just dumped in a bag with no padding and no moisture. Had to file a claim with PayPal to get my money back

I would give them a lower rating but can't. Contacted Company about 3 weeks ago getting my order on 5/5. Also requested the refund policy. Was told that I would get my order by the 5th. It is now the 18th and no email, no product, no response. And, there is a no refund policy here, just store credit. I won't do business with them again. read more

With thoughts of spring coming soon, maintaining a healthy and productive garden comes to mind. Just ordering seeds and colorful flowers from the usual catalogs is not enough. Left to fend on their own, your garden plants will likely be attacked by cutworms, beetles, whiteflies, and my #1 nemesis: slugs. They may even languish and struggle, malnourished in poor soil with no earthworms for aeration. The tomatoes will get yellow leaves and their fruits will develop a rotten bottom. Japanese beetles will devour your raspberries, and a legion of aphids will suck the life out of your favorite flower. Maybe even deer, moles or rabbits will feast on your hard labor. That's where Gardens Alive! comes to the rescue. I've been buying from them for many years, ever since they once sent me a coupon for $25 in free merchandise. At that time, I used to be a regular shopper in the garden pest control aisle at Home Depot, buying yet another box of anti-slug pellets, slug bait, or that stuff that looks like sawdust and supposedly kills slugs too. So I wondered... if I was using all these pesticides, why was I still overrun with slugs? As a way of trying a new product, I used my coupon on something called Escar-Go. It's an organic slug killer that is non-toxic to people or pets, with its main ingredient being iron sulfate that decomposes into garden nutrients. Slugs eat the stuff, get a bad tummy-ache, lose their appetite and die about a week later. I bought a small 15 oz box to start out. Well, wouldn't ya know it! A week later, my lettuce, beans and spinach were alive and well and no signs of missing leaves, beheaded stems or shiny mucus trails glistening in the morning sun. Yes, victory was mine and the slugs died. I buy 1 box of this stuff each year and apply it when I see a problem and don't have to worry about it again for the growing season. Where I used to need 3-4 larger boxes of pesticides for repeated applications, I get by with a small box of this stuff each year. So I tried Tomatoes Alive next. It contains a mixture of key nutrients and micronutrients essential to the well-being of tomatoes. Unlike Miracle-Gro, it did not need diluting or endanger my tomatoes from getting burned by an overdose. I got so many tomatoes, I had to cut back on planting as many the following year, as I was just giving them all away to people at work and around the neighborhood! Got grubs in your lawn or weird-looking knotted patterns on your root vegetables? Chances are, it's the larva of a moth or some other burrowing bug. Well, that's where the beneficial SF nematodes come in. They arrive on these yellow-brown, rotten-smelling sponges. Basically, it's a soil microbe that infects the larva and causes it to get ill and die. You wring out and dilute the sponge contents in a bucket of water and spread it across your garden in the springtime. This year, I got Fruit Trees Alive to spread around my 2 young pear trees and get them get a boron fix for their roots. In short, Gardens Alive offers organic gardening products that really work. A lot of their products seem more expensive than the mass-market stuff you find in the big stores, but it is a lot safer for the garden and the environment, besides producing better results overall. read more

Ordered a month ago.... no contact was made about a delay in shipping. Called them today and they still have not shipped! Don't waste your time...you may never get your order read more

- 10 stars. The succulents arrived on Friday. UGH!!! They all looked half dead and on a couple of the plants, more than half of their 'petals' (or whatever they call it on succulents) had fallen off. They look like Charlie Brown Xmas Tree Succulents. 6 half dead plants = ~$31. I went to Home Depot over the weekend, picked up 6 more much BIGGER succulents and 2 bags of succulent soil for ~$30! What a rip off Michigan Bulb is :-( BEWARE: Don't buy anything online from this company...that goes by Michigan Bulb! I will NEVER order from them again. read more

To be clear, I received my small order quickly and with no issues... However, I still find issue with this company. With in a matter of days, they polluted my in-box with god only knows how many marketing emails, that I specifically recalled unchecking the box for during checkout to disallow. I have continued to receive them, even after "unsubcribing" via one of the emails. Seriously, how can I make them stop?? I'm getting 5 or more a day. Yesterday I recieved my package in the mail, which we found FULL of paper marketing materials for all kinds of irrelevant things (i.e. wine, Medical alert necklace, bathtub, etc.) to include one of those trashy airplane catalogs full of as-seen-on-tv products. What is this shit?? So not only have they polluted my email, they have also successfully polluted my mail box. I won't be doing business with them again. Marketing. You're doing it wrong. read more

I don't know how many times they changed my delivery date. I ordered a few plants at the end of August and I still didn't receive the plants. Do not count on the delivery day! read more

STAY AWAY They kept changing my shipping dates on items in stock and would not respond to my emails. I was finally able to talk to someone on the phone and cancelled my order and they said they could not refund my money because they never billed my card, which they did. I had to dispute the charge with my credit card company. I will never do business with this company or any of their associates again. read more

I was a little skeptical that BBB gave this website really low ratings, but I bit the bullet and ordered from here anyway. They were the cheapest place to get a calamondin tree (Filipinos love them!) for my mom. It took a couple weeks before it actually shipped, and I was worried it was a scam. But I took into account that they mentioned plants are shipped when dormant so that they don't get stressed and die in transit. Also, they didn't charge my card until it was delivered! Nice, tight packaging, and a month in, my tree has mini flower buds on it! read more

Gardens Alive Sales - just a cluster out of the 42 buds on my calamondin tree! - Nurseries & Gardening Near Me - Greendale, Indiana

Zero investment in proper customer service. Big departure from 20 years ago, when this natural garden products supply house was a catalog mail order company. Now that Internet telephony allows for offshore call handling from India, the Ohio/Indiana employees we dealt with are gone. My order for a $200+ composter never shipped. The India-based call center told me twice over 20 days that the item was en route. It never was sent and when I called a third time to cancel the order, the customer service manager -- from Chennai, Hyperbad or someplace similar -- didn't even offer an apology until I told him that's what customers expect when retailers disappoint. I heard a Marketplace radio story about Gardens Alive teetering on financial ruin. Pity, because I loved their products. But I won't tolerate crappy service. So, count me out. read more

Awful, just awful. I ordered 2 sets of the apple maggot lures, item 8683, which the catalog lists as a set of 3 for $9.99. Instead they shipped only two lures. I wrote an email to tell them they shorted my order, explaining I only received 2 of the 6. Today I receive another 2 lures, still 2 short of fulfilling my order. These people are breathtakingly incompetent and careless. read more

If you have any other option from where to buy from, buy there! Do not expect much from this company, the plants are very small and do not hold up to the very slow mail they use to ship. My tomatoes came very tiny, I have never seen plants this small from anywhere else? In comparison, small local plants are over 2 foot tall now, Gardens alive are astill as they sent them only about 2 inches tall. I have done everything I can to help them along, giving them the best miracle grow soil, water everyday...but they are so stunted from the long time and delays in shipping, I am not sure they will recover. Don't buy from here if you have any other choice to buy. This has been my experience and are my opinions, but I don't seem to be alone in this finding...Even if these plants are saved, there will be little time left in the season for them to mature and produce. I should have known better when their site didn't have a review area... read more

I've been buying from Gardens Alive for so long that I can't remember when I started. Since at least the late 1980's. It's like they've suddenly changed owners. They used to be great. Now, their shipping is expensive, slow, and customer service isn't very savvy. If you live nearby and can walk in, maybe you'll be okay. I don't recommend mail order. I've noticed that Amazon sometimes carries Gardens Alive products for LESS $ than the actual retailers. read more

Changed the amount charged AFTER sale: unethical, incompetent, or both? I placed an order on-line paying in full the amount listed as due. After the goods were sent, the company sent a supplemental invoice! When I asked for an explanation, the company rep (in an off-shore call enter, not in-house) could not provide one, so either the company did not charge the correct amount to Paypal when they shipped each of the various parts of my large order or they changed the price after the fact. In either case, the rep couldn't explain it and didn't care that they were losing a long-time customer over a trivial sum. Note that many of their headliner products (like "WOW weed killer") are now available elsewhere in generic form for a fraction of the amount, so there is even less reason to put up with this level of 'customer dis-service'... read more

I placed a large order and my charge card was immediately charged. Three weeks went by and I heard nothing. I contacted them and they said several items were on backorder. I requested they cancel the backordered items and ship the rest. They said they could not do that as the order was being processed and it would ship in two or three days. Five days later I still have not received an notice that the order was shipped. Shysters!!! read more

Had an issue with an order, and after some back and forth Garden's Alive fixed the problem. It took some pushing, but I am satisfied with the effort they made to resolve the problem. read more

I have bought many things from Gardens Alive and love their products. But their customer (no) service is so horrible I don't know what to do. Their customer (no) service is in India, you can't talk to real people that know what is going on, and you can't ever resolve anything. If there is a problem - they don't tell you. You have to wait and wonder - why did that order never show up - trace the order back to find out that there is a problem and then you are stuck in customer (no) service hell - and can't ever resolve the problem! The bottom line is - I want to find other retailers to buy the same stuff from because Gardens Alive customer (no) service is so bad. Can anyone suggest other online retailers that sell the same things? Thanks! read more

Garden's Alive is the parent company of Breck's Mail Order bulbs and plants. Most recently Brecks sent out a plant and bulb catalogue which stated Buy Now Pay Later. I placed my order for Fall bulbs , within 24 hours I noticed charges for these bulbs were placed on my credit card. When I contacted them at "service@brecks.com , I received a polite response saying oh this offer to pay later is only for call in orders not online orders. This caveat is no where in their catalogues that are easy to find. I would avoid using this company as what you see is not what you get read more

Over-promise. Under-deliver. That summarizes the way Gardens Alive does business. If there were a "0 star" rating I would have used that. Gardens Alive has a slick website but nothing else to offer. The minute you order something you will be deluged with emails promoting their other products. I ordered a product on April 19th. I received the product on May 6th. The product (Beneficial Nematodes) is supposed to be kept refrigerated until use. I have seen other companies ship their products packed in dry ice or in other ways to insure good product quality. Not Gardens Alive. They shipped (via USPS) in a bubble pack with no protection from the heat. It takes days to get an email answered and when I did, they only answered half of my questions. Now I have absolutely no idea if the nematodes I received are even viable at this point. I cannot think of a single product they offer that would warrant me - or anyone else - choosing to order from them instead of just going to a local garden supply store. Save yourself time, money, aggravation and tons of unwanted, unneeded and misleading emails. Shop somewhere else. read more

Unbelievably slow shipping! Website says they ship same day or next day. It's now been a week since I placed my order and they're saying I'll receive it some time next week. They got the second star only because the web site appears to have a good selection of products. read more

I love these products.. I use the mole relief pellets.. It Works ,but it takes about a year to get going good. I love it.. Use it every year..shipping times are a bit strange. She I order something I want it now not when some company decides I should plant it read more

Been a customer for years 15+....this last order is still on back order...when I ordered they did not let me know I would get two backorder dates and counting...ordered on Oct. 20th 2016 and now it looks like another back order for Jan. 20th, 2017...lets see if I get my stuff...3 months later...yes I know you are getting a new warehouse...but really? read more

This organization did not deserve even one star! I just had the worst experience with this company and they have made very little effort to make things right, except to say they have credited my account, proof of which is non-existent. Their mismanagement of my order resulted in the worst experience I've ever had with an online vendor. They have been unhelpful, and incompetent. Please be aware that you cannot cancel an order until after it is shipped. You need to know that they claim that you can make changes in an order once you receive email confirmation of your order, which in my case took over 30 hours, and which was sent only after the item had already shipped. Please be aware of their call center in Asia that is used during normal US business hours and for which there is no toll free number. Please know that the employees of the call center are provided with a very lean script of polite chatter while they are unable to see orders, get into the system, cancel orders just hours old, stringing one along into thinking they they could help until 30 minutes into the call (that one is paying for) do they actually admit that they can not make any changes or get into the system. I had written several emails which went unanswered for two days. The email confirmation did not say that my order had been already sent, but I learned that it was when my emails were finally answered with a form letter saying oops, sorry, but it's already been shipped. We'll credit you for it. I had to request tracking information and was finally sent a UPS tracking number. After trying for over 24 hours for my tracking number to populate on the UPS site with no success I requested that G.A. check the number. They then told me that the very same number was USPS tracking number, but alas, that number does not work for USPS either. More emails...and G.A. finally admitted to me in an email that they cannot track my order after all. This seems to be a company that is clearly in disarray. Therefore, I warn all potential customers and fellow eco gardeners to think twice before placing an order with this organization. I warned this vendor via email that I would be posting my experience with them on social media and they were still impotent to make things right other than a hollow "sorry for any inconvenience." I'm frankly surprised that they remain in business. read more

Worst customer service ever-do not order from this company! They decide randomly when to ship your order and give no mention of this insane policy on when you give them your money. read more

My yard was mostly weeds until I used W.O. W. this spring. I have never had such a beautiful lawn. I can't say enough good about it. Also used Iron X . I want more for my son's yard . I hope it isn't too late in the season.. I originally got it for the environmental friendliness of the product. and the results amazed me! (shipping was a tad slow) read more