Plant Passports: Do You Need One to Sell Plants in the UK?

The question sounds simple: do I need a plant passport to sell my plants? The answer that trips people up is that it does not really depend on what you grow. A tray of tomato seedlings, a potted hosta and a bare-root fruit tree are all "plants for planting", and on their own that tells you almost nothing. What decides whether you need a passport is who you sell to, and how the sale happens. Get that boundary right and most small growers find they sit on the passport-free side of the line for their main sales, while a couple of common moves quietly push them over it.

This is a plain-English guide, not legal advice. The rules come from the Great Britain plant health regime run by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), and they are devolved in part, so treat this as a map and confirm the current position with the linked sources before you sell. Read the boundary below first, because it is the whole game.

When you do not need a passport: the in-person final-user sale

Start with the good news, because for a lot of smallholders and market gardeners this is where most of their selling sits. If you are selling plants for planting directly to members of the public who are buying them for their own use, and they pay you in person, you do not need a plant passport. gov.uk says it plainly: "You do not need a plant passport for other retail sales - for example, if you sell plants to customers paying in person."

The Plant Health Portal puts the same rule from the grower's side: "In general you do not need to issue a PP to members of the public for their own personal use." A "final user" is someone acquiring the plant for personal use, outside any trade or business. So a market stall, a farm-gate plant table, a stand at a village fete or a nursery open day, all selling to gardeners who walk away with the plant, are the passport-free heart of small-scale plant selling.

Two things to hold onto, though. First, this exemption is only about the passport label; it does not cancel the wider plant-health rules, and you can still be inspected. Second, it is fragile. It relies on all three conditions holding at once: plants for planting, a final user, and a face-to-face sale. Change any one and you are usually back into passport territory, which is what the rest of this guide is about.

When you do need one: trade sales and distance sales

There are two big situations where the exemption does not apply.

Selling to another professional operator. If your buyer is a business rather than a gardener, you need a passport, and there is no wriggle room. gov.uk is blunt about the most common case: "There is no exemption when you directly supply retailers." The same applies to wholesalers, other nurseries and growers, and landscapers or contractors buying plants to use on a job, because they are all professional operators moving plants on in trade. Even a single tree sold to a landscaping business needs its passport. The Plant Health Portal spells it out: "If you are supplying another business (e.g. a retailer) you will have to provide PPs even if those plants are destined for a final user who will acquire them for personal use." In other words, the exemption only ever applies at the very last step of the chain, the actual sale to the gardener.

Distance selling to the public. This is the one that catches home growers out. If you sell to the public but not face to face, the exemption is gone. gov.uk: "If you're selling plants through distance contracts (for example, online) directly to customers buying for personal use, a plant passport is still needed." Distance selling covers online sales, mail order, magazine orders and orders taken over the phone. The logic is that the buyer never inspects the plant before paying, so the passport carries the plant-health assurance in its place. If you plan to post plug plants, sell perennials through an online shop, or run a mail-order fruit-tree list, you are a distance seller and you need to be an authorised operator. The wider legal side of that channel, from consumer rights to labelling, is covered in our guide to selling online in the UK; this page is only about the passport.

What counts as a "plant for planting"

Because the passport rules hang on the phrase "plants for planting", it is worth knowing how wide it is. The Plant Health Portal defines it as a plant which may remain planted, be planted, or be replanted. That is broad. It includes potted plants, turf and potted herbs, and even aquatic plants. So your veg seedlings, perennials in pots, cell-grown plugs, bare-root hedging and fruit trees are all plants for planting.

Cut flowers and cut foliage are a different thing, because they are not going to be planted. But most of what a plant-raising smallholder sells, the living, plantable stock, sits squarely inside the definition, which is why the who-and-how boundary above matters so much. Our companion guide on how to sell plants and seedlings walks through the practical side of turning that stock into sales.

Seeds are treated differently

Seed is a common point of confusion, so keep it separate in your head. The passport regime treats "plants for planting" and seed differently, and most seed does not need a passport. The Plant Health Portal notes that only some seed species need one, and gov.uk publishes the specific list of plants, seeds and objects that require a passport for movement within Great Britain. A packet of your own saved bean or calendula seed is very unlikely to be on it.

There are two exceptions to have on your radar. First, a handful of listed higher-risk seed species do need a passport, so check your species against the gov.uk list rather than assuming. Second, seed potatoes are firmly inside the rules: they must have a passport at every stage of the trade chain in Great Britain, and if you grow them you must be registered with APHA. Seed also has its own separate marketing and certification rules, which is a different subject again from plant passports.

Becoming an authorised operator, and what it involves

If your selling plans put you on the passport-needed side, here is the shape of getting authorised in England and Wales. It is a two-step process.

Getting authorised to issue plant passports (England and Wales)

1. 1

   Register as a professional operator

   Every business that works with plants must register with APHA as a plant health professional operator. You can apply online, and APHA says it processes the registration within five days. You will get a unique registration number, which is the number that appears on your passport labels.

2. 2

   Apply for authorisation to issue passports

   Registration alone does not let you issue passports. You make a separate application to be authorised to issue UK plant passports for the material you handle, such as plants for planting, some seeds or seed potatoes.

3. 3

   Pass your inspection

   APHA carries out an inspection shortly after you are authorised. Inspectors interview whoever is responsible for passports, audit your records, and check and sample your plants for pests and disease. If your site does not pose a plant-health risk, your authorisation stands.

4. 4

   Keep records and renew every year

   You must keep traceability records for three years and be able to show, for every unit, who supplied it to you and who you supplied it to. You renew your authorisation each year through the eDomero system, and there is a further inspection at renewal.

There is a cost to being inspected, and it is worth budgeting for. APHA's inspection fees are £61.58 for each 15 minutes (or part of it), with a minimum fee of £123.16, and the same rates apply to renewal inspections. Submitting a passport-authorisation application on paper rather than online adds a further £20.66. If you are only ever authorised to issue supplier documents rather than passports, there is no inspection fee. These figures are current on the gov.uk guidance, but fees change, so check before you apply.

What a plant passport must show

If you do issue passports, the label has a set format. It must carry the words "UK Plant Passport" in English at the top, followed by information under four letters, A to D (with a fifth, E, used only for Northern Ireland to Great Britain movements). gov.uk sets out each part.

The passport has to be attached to the smallest package the plants travel in, and it cannot ride along as a delivery note in the driver's cab. If you split a consignment or grow plants on so their characteristics change, you generally have to issue fresh passports. One more thing worth knowing: moving your own regulated plants between your own premises needs a passport too if those premises are more than 10 miles apart, so a grower with two distant sites is not automatically exempt.

The rules by nation

The Great Britain scheme is not quite one scheme, and Northern Ireland is a different regime again. Here is how it splits.

England and Wales are the straightforward case for most readers. Scotland's difference is mainly about who you deal with, not the core rule. Northern Ireland is the one to treat with real care, because its rules genuinely diverge and the paperwork for moving plants across the Irish Sea is different in kind.

The traps people fall into

• Assuming the rule is about the plant. It is about the buyer and the channel: the same seedling can be passport-free or not depending on who buys it and how.
• Thinking a passport-free market stall means you can also post plants to online customers. Distance selling to the public needs a passport even though a face-to-face sale of the same plant would not.
• Treating a sale to a landscaper, garden centre or fellow grower as "just retail". Supplying any business is a trade sale and needs a passport, with no exemption.
• Believing the final-user exemption runs up the whole chain. It only applies at the very last step, the actual sale to the gardener; every business-to-business step before it needs a passport.
• Confusing registering as an operator with being authorised to issue passports. They are two separate steps, and even non-issuing retailers often have to register and keep records.
• Assuming all seed is exempt. Most is, but some listed seed species need a passport, and every seed potato does.
• Forgetting the annual inspection and its fee, or letting authorisation lapse by missing the yearly renewal.
• Applying the England and Wales rule in Northern Ireland, which follows different, EU-aligned plant health rules.

Before you sell plants: check these

1. Who is your buyer? A member of the public buying for their own garden, or another business (shop, wholesaler, grower, landscaper)?
2. How does the sale happen? Face to face, or at a distance (online, post, phone)?
3. If every sale is in person to final users, you are likely passport-free for those sales, but keep the wider plant-health rules in mind.
4. If any sale is to a business, or to the public by distance, plan to register with APHA (or SASA in Scotland) and get authorised to issue passports.
5. Are you selling seed? Check your species against the gov.uk list; most seed is exempt, but some seed and all seed potatoes are not.
6. If you will issue passports, can you produce the A to D information (botanical name, registration number, traceability code, country of origin) and keep records for three years?
7. Have you budgeted for the authorisation inspection and its annual renewal?
8. Does Northern Ireland feature in your selling at all? If so, check the separate rules with DAERA before you move anything.

When in doubt, check the current guidance for your nation (gov.uk and APHA for England and Wales, SASA for Scotland, DAERA for Northern Ireland) and contact the plant health team before you sell. On plant passports, a quick email to APHA up front is far cheaper than getting the boundary wrong once your stock is already on the move.