Ending Your Office Plant Hire Contract? Read This First

Most office plant hire agreements run for 3 or 5 years — and many renew automatically if nobody acts before the notice window. If your contract is coming up for renewal, this is the one moment where you have real choices. Here is how to use it.

To be clear: ongoing plant care is a perfectly good service — we provide it ourselves for a number of commercial clients. This guide is simply about making the renewal decision deliberately, rather than by default.

Step 1: Check your notice period now

Plant hire contracts commonly require three months' written notice before the end of the term, and roll into a renewal if the date passes. Dig out the agreement and put the notice deadline in your calendar before doing anything else — even if you have not decided what to do yet, serving notice keeps your options open.

Step 2: Understand what leaves with the contract

Under a hire agreement you rent the plants and planters — you do not own them. At the end of the term, the scheme is usually collected by the contractor.

It is worth asking your current supplier two questions: can we buy the existing plants at the end of the term, and at what price? Sometimes the buyout figure is reasonable; often it is close to the price of new plants.

Step 3: Do the renewal maths

Published UK trade pricing puts large office plant rental at roughly £3.70–£5.50 per plant per week. Renewing a 10-plant scheme for another 3 years is therefore around £5,800–£8,600 — for plants you still will not own at the end.

Buying an equivalent scheme outright costs a fraction of that: our ready-curated 10-piece collection, planters included, is £2,995 one-off, and individual 180–200cm statement plants run £295–£595. The full numbers are in our transparent office plant pricing guide.

"But the contract includes maintenance…"

It does — a visit every few weeks to water, feed and swap failures. For large planting schemes across multiple floors, or offices that want zero involvement, that service has genuine value — and it is a service we offer too.

The question worth asking is whether it needs to be bundled into a multi-year term. Well-chosen architectural plants — kentia palms, dracaena, rubber plants, ZZ plants — need around ten minutes of watering a week. Every Plant Drop plant comes with plain-English care guidance, lifetime advice from our horticultural team, a 30-day replacement guarantee, and an optional Plant Protection plan (about 20% of the plant's value per year) if you want failure cover without a contract. Ongoing care, if you want it, is priced separately — as a choice.

How switching works

There is no consultation requirement, no proposal cycle and no new contract.

1. Serve notice on your current agreement.
2. Choose plants online — or start from a simple guide to how many plants your office needs, or book an Interior Plant Consultation & Plant Plan (from £250) if you would like a designed scheme.
3. We deliver ready-planted — hand-delivered by our own team in London, by specialist plant courier across mainland UK. Plants arrive in their nursery grow pots, which sit straight inside your decorative planters — so there is nothing to install. Prefer a permanent finish? Add the Professional Planting Finish and everything arrives potted in your chosen planters.
4. Time delivery for the week after your old scheme is collected, and the office is never bare.

Frequently asked questions

Can I leave my plant hire contract early?

Usually only at the end of the current term, with notice — early exit typically means paying the remaining fees. If you are mid-term, diarise the notice deadline and plan the switch for renewal.

Do I have to sign a new contract to have office plants?

No. Plant Drop supplies office plants outright with no contract and no monthly fees. You own the plants and planters from day one, and care services are optional.

What happens to my office while switching suppliers?

Arrange your Plant Drop delivery for just after the contractor's collection date. Plants arrive ready-planted, so the space is dressed again the same day.

We already look after commercial spaces like The Shard, Blank Street and Mandarin Oriental Mayfair — see all our office projects.

Coming to the end of a plant contract and want a like-for-like quote to compare against your renewal? Send us the details — we will price it transparently, with or without ongoing care, and there is no contract unless you want one.