Most plants given as gifts are dead by spring. Not because the person was careless, but because the plant was chosen to look good in a shop, not to live in their flat.

This is a guide to choosing the other kind. It is written by people who ship live plants for a living, so it is biased in the obvious way, but the advice below holds whether you buy from us or from the florist on your corner.

Ask three questions before you buy anything

1. Which way do their windows face?

This is the single thing that decides whether a plant lives. A north-facing room in the northern hemisphere gets no direct sun at all. Most of the plants sold as gifts - calatheas, crotons, flowering tropicals - will be dropping leaves within a month in that room.

If you do not know, assume the worst and buy something that tolerates low light. A snake plant or a ZZ plant in a dim hallway still looks like a plant a year later. A fiddle leaf fig in the same spot looks like a stick.

2. Do they have a cat or a dog?

Cats chew. This matters more than people think: pothos, philodendron, dieffenbachia, peace lily and dracaena are all on the ASPCA toxic list, and they are also the five plants most likely to be sitting on a gift table.

If there is an animal in the house, choose from plants that are checked against the ASPCA non-toxic list. Calathea, peperomia, most hoyas, spider plants and true ferns are all fine. Be careful with lists you find online - a lot of them are copied from supplier labels rather than checked.

3. Honestly, how much will they do?

Not how much they say they will do. A plant that needs weekly attention is a chore disguised as a present. If the person travels, works long hours, or has told you before that they are bad with plants, believe them and buy something that forgives a missed week.

Snake plants, ZZ plants, pothos and most succulents survive two or three weeks of neglect. That is not a compromise - it is the correct gift for that person.

One plant or a set?

A single large plant makes a better statement. A set of three small ones is usually the better gift.

The reason is that a beginner learns faster with three. If one sulks, the other two carry on, and they find out which corner of the flat actually works. Give someone one expensive plant and a dark room, and the whole experiment fails at once.

Sets also ship better. Three plants in one box costs a fraction of three separate parcels, which is why a trio often costs less than two plants bought on their own. Our plant gift sets start at $48.99 for a trio.

The pot question nobody mentions

Most plants bought online arrive in a plastic nursery pot, not the ceramic one in the photograph. This is normal and it is better for the plant - nursery pots drain properly, and a plant sitting in a decorative pot with no drainage hole is a plant with root rot in three months.

But it does look less like a present. If you want it to feel finished, buy a cheap ceramic cachepot separately and drop the nursery pot inside it. That also lets them water it in the sink and put it back, which is the easiest watering routine there is.

We say this on our own product pages too, because "gift plant" photos online routinely show a pot that is not included.

Timing, if you are posting it in winter

Live plants and freezing weather do not mix. A plant that spends a night in an unheated depot at -5°C arrives black.

Three practical rules:

• Order early. Two weeks before you need it, not two days. Any seller worth using will delay a shipment rather than send a plant into a cold snap, and that means no one can promise you a specific December date.
• Ship to where someone is. A box left on a porch overnight in January is a dead plant, whatever was in it.
• Check there is a live arrival guarantee. Ours covers 30 days with photos and no need to ship anything back. If a seller does not offer one for a live plant in winter, that tells you something.

What to say when you hand it over

Tell them two things: how much light it wants, and how often to water it. Write it on the card if you have to. The most common way a gift plant dies is kindness - someone waters it every few days because it feels like the caring thing to do, and it drowns.

"Bright room, water when the top inch of soil is dry" is enough. That one sentence saves more plants than any amount of fertiliser.

Where to start

• Plant Gifts - every set we sell, from $48.99, sorted by price.
• Holiday Gift Sets - the Christmas boxes, including a living Christmas tree set.
• Pet-Safe Houseplants - checked one by one against the ASPCA list.
• Easy Care Plants - for the person who has killed things before.

Free shipping on every order, and a live arrival guarantee on all of them.