Fast-Growing Trees Review

Fast Growing Trees total rating score went down 1.5 points bumping Fast Growing Trees grade down slightly from a 'B' to a 'B-'. 

As we mentioned two months ago Fast Growing Trees made some updates to the look and feel of the website.  The home page is totally new, the font size on product pages is a lot larger.  It looks like they may have switched to a whole new platform. Fast Growing Trees seems to have come through without experiencing too many technical issues that usually ensnare any switch like this. That's a pretty big deal.

I have endured a few transitions like this with another online nursery that were (and continue to be) nightmares. There are some new elements on the site that should help users, others we're not so sure about.  Either way the site is pretty easy to use. 

With the changes, Fast Growing Trees is starting to look a lot more like their sister site, Brighter Blooms. 

We noticed that the roses are listed for sale as either 1 year or 2 year old plants. They do list list a height range in the bullet points below each size.  I've never seen plant sizes primarily listed by age.  Maybe that's a growing trend? (pun intended)

Fast-Growing-Trees.com is the sister site to BrighterBlooms.com.  Fast Growing Trees started a few years before Brighter Blooms.  They both share the same field, plants & office staff.  Based in Fort Mill, SC gives them a pretty good selection for southern grow zones and can usually ship all winter to southern grow zone locations. 

Their ship times, or at least how soon they get your plants packed & shipped is pretty amazing.  We were also impressed with the amount of information on the different evergreen product pages.  A lot of questions & answers as well as planting guides.

Fast Growing Trees Terms of Service has changed and appears to be an exact copy of Brighter Blooms. This includes language for their plant guarantee stating they might trim roots.  Not a fan of that.

The company that owned Fast Growing Trees and Brighter Blooms was sold early in 2018. It was announced in  a press release on February 9, 2018.

What were the red flags?  We took away three points for the following reasons:

• They stopped offering a 30 day 100% satisfaction guarantee.  Your best solution would be a one time replacement with you paying the ship cost.
• They charge a 25% restocking fee if a return is authorized.  That excludes shipping. Not the worst restocking fee but still a bit high in our opinion.
• Confusing language with the guarantee.  It references providing extended time for the guarantee if you take delivery of a dormant plant.  But, then it says; "we will guarantee it outside of the five-day notification period."  That's the only place we see any mention of a 5 day period.  That's confusing.